We are building an ancient Roman garden in our backyard. Yeah...
it's not that. It's this. It's still in the very, very early stages. In fact
I only currently have one herb so far, at least that you can't get at the store and that's rue, and
it is fantastic and interesting,
and potentially deadly so I figured I would use it to make some ancient roman artichokes.
So thank you to Magic Spoon for sponsoring this video as we make artichokes
and meander through the gardens of ancient Rome
this time on Tasting History.
So I finally got a rue plant. It is one of those herbs that is used a lot in ancient Roman and Medieval cookery,
but it's really quite hard to find especially fresh. You can get dried online
but the fresh hard to find and very, very different.
One of the differences is that the dried rue does not numb your tongue
but fresh rue does numb your tongue.
It also has this very bitter quality but then there's also this wonderful freshness and almost a sweetness behind it,
and besides its culinary uses it was also used a lot in medicine.
It was thought to make your eyesight better and said to be good for digestion and Hippocrates
said that it could be an antidote for most poisons, very impressive.
Though Aristotle said that it made your sweat smell... so that's less than appetizing.
But the real interesting thing about this herb is that
it can be quite deadly if you eat too much of it, and even just a little bit can be used as an abortifacient
which what it was used in in ancient times in the Middle ages for that purpose so
don't eat too much, and if you're pregnant don't eat any at all.
But if you're an adrenaline junkie like me
(I'm not)
then yeah go ahead and make this dish I found it in the ancient Roman cookbook Apicius 'De re Coquinaria' from the 1st century.
"Another Artichoke. Pour over boiled artichokes, this thickened sauce:
pound celery seed, rue, honey, pepper, add passum, garum, and a little oil.
Thicken with starch, sprinkle with pepper and serve."
Pretty vague but seems doable. So for this recipe what you'll need is:
one tablespoon of rue. If you're using dried rue go with two teaspoons.
One teaspoon of celery seeds, two teaspoons of honey, a half teaspoon of pepper.
I am using long pepper which was very popular in ancient Rome. They had regular black pepper as well as grains of paradise and several others
but the long pepper just has a far more aromatic smell and flavor than than does regular black pepper
so if you can find it, get it. one cup and a little more of raisin wine so the latin term
One cup and a little more of raisin wine.
So the Latin term for this was passum and basically it's a wine made with raisins and so it's a lot sweeter than
your typical wine and it's still made in different forms but etymologically speaking the closest
would be what is known now as Passito, so use that if you can find it.
Then two teaspoons of garum, two tablespoons of olive oil, and one tablespoon of wheat starch or cornstarch.
Then you'l also need four artichokes.
So what's a little weird about this is that in some translations of Apicius
this word for artichokes 'sphondylos' is actually translated as mussels,
but later on in the book there are other recipes for mussels that use the more specific term
mitulis and I've made one of those dishes here on the show now those recipes appear in the section on seafood,
makes sense. This is a section on vegetables and and gardening so why people would think that there
would be a mussels recipe in gardening section I don't really know so that that's one clue.
Now this translation discrepancy doesn't actually have any bearing on the recipe today that we're making but
I just thought it was kind of interesting and i am glad that it is a recipe for artichokes because
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but for now no cereal for me
because I am making artichokes. Now the thing about making artichokes is that there is an enzyme
in artichokes, as there is in a lot of fruits and other vegetables, that will will rapidly oxidize
and turn the artichokes black, and if you're handling them they will turn your hands black
and you can't really wash this off very effectively. There is a way that you can rub lemon on them
and that definitely helps but the best way is to use gloves.
Though we're not really doing a lot with the artichoke so you could probably get away without it but you know what i'm not taking any chances.
Since they're boiled what you want to start off with is a very large pot with about a gallon of water,
and bring it to a boil. Then stir in two tablespoons of salt.
For the artichokes first cut off the stem so that they can sit flat. Then slice off the top inch of each artichoke
and snap off the small leaves at the base. Now many people also snip off the tops of the leaves
but if unless they're really, really spiny you don't have to do that they're going to soften and that part's not edible anyway so
so it doesn't really matter and it looks better if they're not cut off.
Now while the gloves will stop us from getting our hands black, putting a glove on an artichoke is just not practical,
so on those parts that you just cut you can rub some parsley or vinegar,
but most effective is actually lemon and it really does not affect the flavor so i think you're fine even though it's not in the recipe.
Once they're all prepped put the artichokes into the boiling water.
They won't sink but that's okay. Then adjust the heat to maintain a gentle boil and cover the pot
and let them cook for 40 minutes to about an hour. Depending on the size it's going to take a different amount of time,
but when you get close to 40 minutes go ahead and start your sauce
by mincing up the rue and grinding up the pepper and celery seeds then put them into a small
saucepan and mix in the oil the garum the honey and the raisin wine and set over low heat and
slowly bring to a simmer whisking as it heats the ingredients will all combine much better
when heated in a separate cup dissolve the starch into a couple tablespoons of the wine and as soon
as the sauce is simmering pour in the starch and stir then let it simmer for five minutes or until it starts to thicken.
So while the artichokes cook and the sauce thickens i want to tell you about
one of my favorite places in all of California. It's called the Getty Villa and it's in Malibu
and it overlooks the Pacific Ocean. Basically it is a Roman villa in Southern California.
It's filled with art and artifacts from the ancient world but most impressive are the gardens.
They have several gardens filled with flowers, and statues, and herbs, and water features,
and recently when I visited the villa it really made me want an ancient Roman herb garden of my own.
Unfortunately, I don't have a villa.
I know, it's really a travesty.
But I do have a little section of the backyard that can be transformed into an herb garden.
The question is what exactly do I want to put into this herb garden,
and so I figured I'd better do some research into the gardens of ancient Rome.
Ancient gardens were numerous and they were varied. Some of the earliest examples were small gardens
at the back of a house where the family could grow food for their household.
But by the late Republic those with money who could afford an area of their house known as a peristyle began to use that as their garden.
Now these gardens were so much more than just flowers and herbs.
They might have walking paths, benches, sundials, and outdoor eating areas,
and they were decorated with fountains, mosaics, frescoes and statues.
Something I'm really hoping to have for our garden.
Though the common statue that Romans had at the entrance to their garden was the god Priapus
who was the protector of gardens and fruit trees,
and the male genitalia.
Quite the varied resume.
And he's often depicted as having an engorged phallus of several feet or even up to a meter
so having a statue of him protecting your garden is probably going to go against the HOA.
But seriously you can go look him up. I actually did not include an image
of the full him because they are quite graphic from ancient Rome,
and I was worried that the video would actually get flagged
Now while I'm sure I would be quite content with one of these peristyle gardens they were nothing
compared to those at the giant country villas of the ancient Roman upper class.
The kind of garden that Varro said "Should afford him both profit and pleasure."
These could include larger structures like fish ponds and rabbit warrens.
"In addition to this... are usually kept places for snails and beehives,
and also casks in which dormice are kept confined."
And I'm not gonna lie the idea of raising dormice is rather tempting
"But the care, increase, and feeding of all these, except the bees is evident."
To keep the weasels out Varro says that the walls need to be very high and made of
very expensive plaster and frankly it's just not my budget.
But Pliny the younger was always much more sensible so I wanted to see what he had to say about his gardens at his villa at Laurentum.
He said they had a border of rosemary and were shaded by grapevines both of which I have.
Though his grapevines were so extensive that you could actually have like a walking path beneath
"Which was so soft and easy to tread that you may walk barefoot on it,
the garden is chiefly planted with fig, and mulberry trees, fragrant with the scent of violets."
So let's consider that a goal for the future, but for now I'm sticking with the herbs and I do have a limited space
so I needed to make some decisions on what herbs I was going to get,
and luckily Columella had some suggestions
"...Now is the time, if pickles cheap you seek, to plant the caper and harsh elecampane and threatening fennel;
creeping roots of mint and fragrant flowers of dill are spaced now
and rue, which the Palladian berry's taste improves.
and mustard which will make him weep who air provokes it..."
Well I don't want to weep, so I'm not going to do mustard, and the fennel I could do. They actually used to
use the cane from the fennel stock to whip naughty children because it didn't leave a mark I guess
which is actually why he calls it the threatening fennel,
but frankly all of those I can find at the grocery but
The rue which the Palladian berries taste improves, Palladian berries being olives
I can't find that at the grocery store and so that ended up being the first herb to add to the garden
but there are others that i really, really want now this is not an extensive list or exhaustive list
it is extensive not an exhaustive list, but these are at the top of it.
Lovage, so this is actually the most common herb in Apicius and it used to grow everywhere but now
it's quite hard to find especially here in the United States.
It kind of looks like Italian parsley but it tastes more of celery,
and the biggest difference is that it can grow up to eight feet high,
and if Pliny the Elder can be trusted, which he usually can't, it's very good to control flatulence.
Marshmallow, now the marshmallow plant has been cultivated in Egypt for at least 4,000 years.
One application would be thickened and then sweetened with honey to make a sort of like mushy lozenge,
and that ended up being recreated in the 1800s in France
though they used sugar and egg whites and that became the precursor
to today's marshmallow that you get at the store.
Now I'm not going to use it as a laxative which
is what Horus says it's good for but I might try out what Pliny the Elder says,
"Whosoever shall take a spoonful of the marshmallow
shall that day be free from all diseases that may come to him."
Now one that I really, really want and I actually think I can find is wormwood,
and I just talked about wormwood in the episode on absinthe but in ancient Rome they would use it in in different foods.
They also used it in their ink to deter rodents and fleas from eating papyrus when written upon
so my extensive papyrus collection will finally be safe,
Pennyroyal, so this is one of those other herbs that I've wanted for a really long time they actually used it in a version of kykeon
which was the ancient potion that I made when i first started the channel.
It also can be quite deadly
in certain quantities so it's one to be careful with but
the reason that I want it is because it's said to keep away mosquitoes and we have a terrible mosquito problem,
and in the 17th century they actually started using it to keep away rattlesnakes.
We don't have a rattlesnake problem but if we did i would really need that.
Now there are a lot of other herbs from the ancient world that I would love to have but I am going to just mention one more and that is
borage. Both Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder believed that borage was actually the drug Nepenthe from Homer's 'Odyssey'.
"Then Helen, daughter of Zeus took other counsel. Straight away she cast into the wine of which they were drinking
a drug to quiet all pain and strife, to bring forgetfulness of every ill."
In the 16th century herbalist John Gerard said "The leaves and flowers of borage put into wine
make men and women glad and merry and drive away all sadness, dullness and melancholy."
Well I'm sold, and the good news is we actually got our hands on some borage seeds.
I do see some borage wine in the near future. I could enjoy it with my ancient Roman artichokes.
So around 40 or 45 minutes take one of the artichokes out of the pot and test to see if it's done by gently pulling on one of the bottom leaves.
If it pops right off and the meat at the bottom kind of scrapes off pretty easily
then that means they're done. So transfer the artichokes to a wire rack set over a baking sheet.
Let them sit for about a minute and then flip them upside down and let them drain and cool for 10 minutes.
And then pour a bit of your sauce on top and sprinkle a little extra pepper on
and here we are ancient Roman artichokes.
The thing is when you pour it on top most of the sauce actually is on the outside and the top of each leaf
while the edible part is down here so
maybe save most of it on the side so you can dip which is what i'm going to do.
Hmm!
Perfect.
Eating these is such a- they're so fun. I love eating artichokes it's kind of a laborious process but
makes a great appetizer because you can like have a conversation while you're doing it.
Even if you're just talking to a camera but it's a long appetizer, good for a long lunch.
Now when it comes to the flavor the artichoke taste well,
it tastes like an artichoke there's not- you know I love the flavor of artichokes but it's it's fairly neutral. It's kind of-
a nutty- a cross between like nutty and asparagus
without the funk of an asparagus. I just love them i also love the texture.
Now if you're missing that funk
it's in the sauce. It's an ancient Roman sauce it has garum in it, and garum is just going to kind of give you that-
that musky funk. Musky Funk, that could be a a band name.
What's cool about it though is that because there is so much of that sweet wine and the honey in there
it's sweet. There's also a small hint of bitterness that is in there, and i guess it comes
from the rue.
I don't know that I'm necessarily picking up the flavor of the rue
but there is the bitterness of the root, if that makes any sense.
Now the fun thing with artichokes is even once you've done all of the leaves you still have the glorious heart
in the center. The flavor is pretty much the same maybe just a little bit stronger but you get a nice big bite
of the meat which is nice after you've just like gotten scraps for the last 15 minutes.
So definitely make these if you like that musky funk of ancient Roman cookery,
and if you don't then
just some butter or remoulade sauce works really really well,
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.