Hannibal Barca the terror of Rome
and one of history's greatest generals has had volumes written about him,
but one thing they always leave out is what did he have for breakfast.
Well I don't know but it might have been something
like this ancient recipe for puls punica or Carthaginian porridge.
So thank you to Hellofresh for sponsoring this video as we make a meal for Hannibal
Barca, not Lecter,
this time on Tasting History.
The city-state of Carthage once had an empire that dominated the Western Mediterranean
yet with few exceptions we have very little information on them from their point of view
because most of what we know about ancient Carthage comes from their sworn enemies the Romans.
Even most of what we know about the food that they ate which is very little comes from Roman authors like Columella's mention of
"...sweet pomegranates which are called Carthaginian apples."
Or the story of Cato the Elder casually dropping some fresh figs from Carthage on the senate floor
as a way to prove that if figs can get here from Carthage in a few days so can a Carthaginian navy.
Cato is also the person who left us one of the only recipes associated with Carthage.
In his work 'De Agri Cultura' he includes a recipe for pulse punica.
Puls being a sort of porridge and punica meaning Phoenician
though by Cato's time it really specifically meant Carthage
which was a former Phoenician trading colony. That's why the wars with Carthage
were called the Punic Wars.
So "To make Carthaginian puls soak one pound of emmer growths in water until well softened.
Pour it into a clean bowl, add 3 pounds of fresh cheese, a 1/2 pound of honey, and one egg,
and mix everything thoroughly. Put the mixture into a new pot."
So Cato must have been distracted when he wrote this recipe down because he's missing
the cooking method, it doesn't actually talk about cooking this dish,
and it's not very likely that he's having us chomp down on raw grains.
Mainly because we have other recipes for ancient puls and and it's always cooked grain.
He actually has some as well as Apicius
so we can look at those old recipes to fill in the gaps on how to cook this one,
and I promise you'll never have to go researching ancient Roman manuscripts to fill in the gaps with the well-written recipes
from today's sponsor Hellofresh.
With 40 chef crafted recipes to choose from each week Hellofresh is a great way to add some variety to your meals,
and that's exactly what I need because I am a creature of habit
and will eat the same like two things every single night for dinner if I don't have other options put before me
but Hellofresh has tons of options. They have pescatarian, vegetarian, fit and wholesome.
They even have meals that are kind of made family friendly for the picky eaters in the house
which sometimes is me.
And after a full day of cooking and filming ancient recipes
sometimes I just want something quick and easy and that's why last night I made the chicken sausage rigatoni with a creamy pink sauce.
Everything came pre-portioned and ready to cook so in less than 30 minutes
I was enjoying a delicious homemade meal.
So if you want to shake up your weekly dinner schedule then go to hellofresh.com and use my code 50tastinghistory to get 50 off plus free shipping.
That's 50tastinghistory at hellofresh.com.
Now another thing that you'll never have to do with a recipe from Hellofresh is convert from ancient Roman measurements to modern day measurements
because it is important in the puls punica recipe to know that the ancient Roman pound
is about 325 grams.
Also, I'm going to cut this recipe in a third because it makes a lot of porridge and I don't need that much porridge.
So for this recipe what you'll need is: a heaping cup or 110 grams of emmer wheat.
That was the most popular grain in Carthage but by the time the Romans came they were using
more durum and common wheat so any of those grains will work just fine.
330 grams of fresh cheese something like a fresh ricotta is going to work really well in this because it's nice and smooth so it's going to incorporate
but there are lots of other fresh cheeses that will work but you do want something that's going to melt fairly easily.
Two and a half tablespoons or 55 grams of honey and 1 3 of a whisked egg.
That's the only problem with cutting the recipe in a third but just eyeball it.
So first pound the ember in a mortar just enough to break open the groats, they don't need to be fully ground up.
Then put the grain in a bowl and pour in cold water over it,
letting it soak for several hours or until well softened.
Once soaked drain the grouts and add two cups or 475 milliliters of fresh water,
and set it over low heat bringing it up to a simmer.
Let it cook at that temperature for about 20 to 30 minutes or until most of the water has evaporated and the grain takes on the look of oatmeal.
Then add in the cheese and stir it in and then add in the honey and stir continuously until everything has melted and combined.
That's why I like if you have a fresh cheese that has been pressed into a shape
it's going to be harder to have it melt but eventually it'll get there.
Once it does remove the puls from the heat and pour in the egg quickly mixing it in.
Then return it to the heat and let it cook for another five minutes.
Now I find it really interesting that this recipe which is supposedly mimicking a recipe from Carthage
was written by Marcus Porcius Cato, Cato the Elder.
And a couple years back I actually did a whole video on Cato the Elder, it was the placenta or placenta cake recipe,
and I commented on his named Porcius
and people sent me images of Porky Pig dressed up as Cato the Elder.
And my friend Bob Bergen who is the actual voice of Porky Pig and has been for over 30 years
recorded Porky saying Cato's famous catchphrase.
That is without stuttering "Carthago Delenda Est", Carthage must be destroyed.
And it is that line that makes it so interesting that Cato included a Carthaginian recipe in his work.
See this phrase wrapped up every speech Cato gave in the senate for he believed
that for Rome to truly thrive Carthage must be destroyed,
And I'm pretty sure he was so anti-Carthage due to trauma from his youth,
trauma stemming from the invasion of Italy by that great Carthaginian General Hannibal.
Of all the Carthaginians you can name I'm going to guess that Hannibal Barca is at the top or at least near the top of your list
because it was he who nearly toppled the Roman Republic during the Second Punic War.
He was so instrumental in that conflict that Polybius the ancient Roman writer
referred to it as the Hannibalic War.
Now to cover the entire life of Hannibal is a little more than I have time for today
but I do have time to cover that part of his life which so traumatized the people of Rome
including Cato the Elder.
And that was Hannibal's 15-year invasion of Italy.
Now most of what we know of that period and really of Hannibal comes again from Roman and Greek scholars
because everything that was in Carthage was destroyed.
Cato eventually did get his way but that doesn't mean that we can't trust those sources somewhat
especially when they show Hannibal to be the badass general that he was.
Now the invasion began in 218 BC when Hannibal marched his army of 38,000 infantry,
8,000 cavalry and 38 elephants over the Alps and into Italy.
Unfortunately for him neither elephants nor people fare very well in a long-term Alpine march
and so when they emerged there was only about 20,000 troops, 4 to 6 thousand cavalry and a handful of elephants left.
But did Hannibal panic at losing half of his army?
No, because just like when you go to a party where you don't know anyone and you're forced to mingle,
Hannibal used this as an opportunity to make new friends,
and Hannibal was very good at making friends especially
with people who were already the enemies of Rome like the Gallic tribes of the Po Valley.
Quickly about 8,000 Gallic warriors joined his army when they went into the Battle of the Trebia.
Now even with those new 8,000 troops Hannibal was pretty fairly matched against the Roman army there
under leadership of Publius Scipio but as I mentioned Hannibal was a certified badass
and quickly obliterated the Roman force killing between 15 and 20,000 troops or about half,
and taking another 15,000 prisoner and sin says Liza Minnelli sang "Everybody loves a winner"
Hannibal quickly found new friends who swelled his ranks to nearly 50,000 at the Battle of Lake Trasimene
where once again he crushed the Romans and it was at this time that
"Hannibal laid waste to their country."
Which caused a bit of a panic amongst the people of Rome including Cato the Elder who signed up to fight.
"He says himself that he made his first campaign when he was seventeen years old,
at the time when Hannibal was consuming Italy with the flames of his successes."
Fortunately for Cato his early military career took him to places outside of the direct path of Hannibal
because the Carthaginian general followed up his victory at Lake Trasimene
with one of the greatest military achievement in history
known as the Battle of Cannae it was supposed to be Rome's big pushback against Hannibal.
"The senate determined to bring eight legions into the field, which had never been done at Rome before,
each legion consisting of five thousand men besides allies...
most of their wars are decided by one consul and two legions... and they rarely employ all four at one time.
But on this occasion, so great was the alarm and Terror of what would happen, they resolved to bring not only four
but eight legions into the field."
And so with eight legions plus a number of allies the Romans put an estimated 86,000 troops onto the field
against Hannibal's 50,000.
Even the Carthaginians were a little dismayed at the size of the force sitting across the battlefield from them.
Plutarch wrote that "One of Hannibal's followers, called Gisco, a Carthaginian of equal rank with himself,
told him that the numbers of the enemy were astonishing: to which Hannibal replied, with a serious countenance,
'There is one thing, Gisco, yet more astonishing, which you take no notice of,'
and when Gisco inquired what, Hannibal answered that
'In all those great numbers before us, there is not one man called Gisco.'
This unexpected jest of their general... caused laughter amongst them all, from which they were hardly able to recover themselves."
Okay it wasn't that funny but I guess even back then you had to laugh at the boss's jokes.
Plus "The army, seeing Hannibal's attendants come back from viewing the enemy in such a laughing condition,
concluded that it must be profound contempt of the enemy that made their general at this moment indulge in such hilarity."
So even outnumbered the Carthaginians seemed confident and they had a right to be because
they had Hannibal that aforementioned badass.
This was a man who when his eye got infected it said that
he plucked it out himself to stop the infection from spreading,
and later in his career during a naval battle he invented snake bombs.
These were jars filled with venomous snakes that would be
hurled over to the other ship and would crash onto the decks spilling out hundreds of venomous snakes.
The inspiration for 'Snakes on a Plane'.
I have had it with these mother @#$%&! snakes on this mother @#$%&!
trireme.
So outnumbered as he was at the battle of Cannae, Hannibal I'm sure cool is a cucumber
executed one of the first known pincer movements in history utterly destroying the Roman army.
Different ancient writers give different numbers for the casualties but most say that out of 86,000 Roman soldiers
between 3,000 and 14,000 survived
with nearly 50,000 being killed and the rest captured. Hannibal only lost about 6,000.
It was the greatest military defeat in Rome's history and within only 20 months of Hannibal's invasion beginning
Rome had lost 20% of male citizens who were of fighting age.
On top of that more and more of Rome's allies especially in southern Italy began to support Hannibal.
And so the people who were actually in the city of Rome just waited for Hannibal to come finish them off.
"Never was there so greater panic and confusion within the walls of Rome."
But Hannibal never came.
"Maharbal who was the leader of his Numidian Cavalry
urged Hannibal to take on Rome itself right after the battle of Cannae
but Hannibal did not do so which led Maharbal to say
"Assuredly no one man has been blessed with all God's gifts,
You, Hannibal, know how to gain a victory; you do not know how to use one."
And for the next 14 years Hannibal remained in Italy taking more and more territory but never attacking Rome itself,
a military tactic which has been argued for the past 2,200 years.
Now over the next decade Hannibal's army was whittled down through Guerrilla tactics employed
by smaller groups of Roman soldiers
while the majority of the Roman army went to go fight the Carthaginians elsewhere,
Basically anywhere Hannibal was not, Iberia, Northern Africa and by the time that Hannibal did one once again face a large Roman military force
it was back in North Africa at the Battle of Zama, and there Hannibal was finally defeated.
The Second Punic War was over but Carthage while greatly diminished was allowed to survive.
But because of all of the death and destruction and terror that the Roman people felt for so many years
there were some Romans who just couldn't let bygones be bygones
like Cato the Elder who even 50 years after that last defeat of Hannibal
was still standing up in the senate declaring "Carthago delenda est."
Now there was a Third Punic War where Carthage was finally destroyed,
and Cato was instrumental in starting that conflict but he never got to see his catchphrase come to fruition
as he died a few years before Carthage fell.
He died with the sting of knowing Carthage as a thriving metropolis who was once again
gaining power throughout the Mediterranean and over on the channel Invicta they just posted a video today about that thriving city.
So if you want to take a stroll through ancient Carthage I will put a link in the description
and who knows maybe as you make your way through a mark it of ancient Carthage you'll see someone,
a Carthaginian citizen sitting down to a bowl of puls punica, Carthaginian porridge.
Which is what I'm going to do right now, and here we are puls punica the porridge of Carthage.
So I gotta say it's not the prettiest dish I've ever seen, kind of looks like
oatmeal and cottage cheese were mixed together neither of which are are pretty in and of themselves but
let's see how it tastes.
Hm!
Hmmm! I have to say I don't know what I was expecting it to taste like but
it wasn't this. I've had pulses before I made one for the gladiator episode,
and they're a lot more grain heavy. This one has a lot more cheese.
It's three pounds of cheese for every one pound of grain so of course it's a lot more cheese and
so it's more like a dessert puls, with the honey in there it's kind of sweet.
It's actually really good. I actually drizzled a little bit more honey on there at the end and I think that that's a good thing,
depends on if you want it really sweet or not but it does kind of add a little bit more sweetness
but it's still not overly sweet which is weird because a lot of ancient Roman recipes that use honey,
it's a lot of honey that just ends up becoming the only flavor that you're eating but this one
you're getting more of the cheese, the only thing I'm not really getting is the the grain,
and that's fine because it is mostly cheese. So this is definitely an ancient recipe worth trying.
It's not a lot of work, a pretty simple dish and and worthwhile,
but again I would make a smaller portion like I did because you're not going to want a huge bowl of this,
unless of course you're feeding Hannibal's army then go with the full amount.
Again I'll put that link to the Invicta video about Carthage in the description
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.