With leftover meat from making game stock When you have made a concentrated game stock, you can sometimes save enough meat from the bones to make a tasty sauce. I had six kilo bones of hare and deer. When I had strained the stock I had almost one kilo of cooked meat. Being Dutch, I wouldn’t…
Italy
Roman patina with herbs
Straight to the recipe In the introduction to the recipe for Roman patina with asparagus and quail I wrote about this dish. On this page is another recipe for patina with asparagus, without meat but with green herbs. I also used green asparagus this time. The cilantro and lovage leaves add a very distinct flavour to this…
Roman fish sauce
Garum or liquamen Garum is one of the basic ingredients in the cuisine of Roman antiquity. It is a fish sauce that was used to salt dishes. One can’t simply use kitchen salt in recipes, because instead of extracting moisture (which is what salt does), garum adds moisture to a dish. When preparing an authentic Roman dish, this sauce is…
Home Made Italian Pasta
The Italians are famous for their pasta. On this page you learn how to make fresh pasta, with eggs and without eggs, and for stuffed pasta like ravioli and tortellini. Asian pasta is also delicious. See here for recipes. And for those of you who are interested in the past, here are recipes for fresh pasta from the sixteenth century. And…
Tortelli in brodo
Straight to the recipe An Italian recipe from the sixteenth century This is a real classic from the Italian kitchen: stuffed pasta in broth. The sixteenth century recipe prescribes the use of meat broth. If you replace this by a good vegetable broth, the result is a very tasty vegetarian dish. It is best not…
Aubergines in aubergine sauce
This recipe for aubergines (eggplants) with aubergine sauce was chosen because of the possible connection with an Arab recipe with aubergines. It is from an Italian cookbook from the end of the fifteenth century that has been published by Terence Scully as The Neapolitan recipe collection. ‘Cuoco Napoletano’ (see bibliography). The Southern part of Italy has been…
Mussels in antiquity
Straight to the recipe As the Romans liked to eat them The months around Thanksgiving and Christmas are filled with good wining and dining. Give yourself a break from stuffed turkeys and roasted gammon, and have some humble shellfish. The mussel has been eaten ever since the stone age. The historical recipe on this page…
Roman sourdough bread
The Romans knew several kinds of bread. Mostly these breads were made with sourdough. The meal that was used was wheat, spelt, barley or rice. Even ground pulses were used. In the second century before Christ bread started to displace pulses as basic food. Bread was eaten every day, at every meal. This explains the…
Chicken breast with blackberry sauce
A fifteenth-century recipe from Italy Straight to the recipe The colour of food is important to the way in which we experience it. Food wich is green, golden, white or red is thought of as tasty food. Food wich looks blue is less attractive. Ingredients wich are blue-coloured by nature are very few. All that…