The Delicious Legacy

Apparently the first recorded fish sauce was produced by the ancient Greeks of the Black Sea colonies. Clearly the abundant fish resources of the Black Sea played a role in the production of this extremely popular condiment!

The sauce we know from Martial's verse - "here is lordly garum, a costly gift made from the first blood of a still-gasping mackerel!" was almost certainly a table condiment and made from blood and viscera of very fresh fish. Sometimes handled by the diner and used in relatively small amounts over already cooked food. (Sally Grainger 'A New Approach to Roman Fish Sauce' -2007)

The other more commonplace kind of sauce was called liquamen and was used in the kitchen by the cook to add salt and other more complex flavours to most dishes, just as we add salt during cooking. This was made using various kinds of whole small fish which were then mixed with salt and left to dissolve and ferment for up to three months. The resulting liquefied fish was removed from its bone and shipped all over Mediterranean in special amphorae. This whole -fish sauce is very similar to the Thai fish sauces so popular today! Roman fish sauce was NOTHING like modern anchovy paste; using the latter has been the downfall of many an attempt to recreate ancient recipes! ( Sally Grainger -The Classical Cookbook)

Fish sauce was manufactured at factory sites along the coast; these were typically beside a beach or a harbour. The fish was only a few hours from the net when the process began. These sauces cannot and shall not be seen as a rotten decaying substance! What took place was not bacterial putrefaction (which, given the high proportion of salt would be impossible) but enzymic proteolysis, a process in which the enzymes in the viscera of the fish convert the solid protein into a liquid form. The viscera is therefore essential to the process; without them the protein does not dissolve.

What the modern gourmet has to understand, and probably some only know too well from modern experience, is that there was not a single Garum sauce. As always there was the elite one, one for commoners and many other versions in between. For example, when Martial describes this sauce being "made from the blood of a still breath­ing mackerel " it therefore implies this was a black and bloody sauce. Or, the surviving Greek recipes for fish sauce also affirm the importance of the distinc­tion between blood/viscera sauce and one made from whole fish. As we see things can get a little bit complicated when we muddle through the murky waters of ancient gastronomy!

One could buy aged elite black mackerel garum, ordi­nary black tuna garum, elite liquamen cooking sauces made from mackerel or cheaper cooking sauces made with a mixture of clupeidae and sparidae, or a tuna or mackerel muria, both of which could also be aged or new. All of these products could also come in second or even third grade versions.

The expensive and intensely- flavoured blood sauce would be lost in the cooking process and wasted, needed to be seen by the gourmet to be experienced, val­ued and discussed. Therefore we can conclude it would have been the table sauces handled by the guests or the host himself.

From modern South East Asian cuisine we learn of a fermented squid blood viscera (and ink) sauce that is used today in Japanese cuisine. It is known as ishiri and is used as a finishing sauce for sushi as well as cooked food. Its taste neither fishy nor salty, and smells of the iron compounds from the blood. Japanese cuisine also has a whole-fish sauce called ishiru and many dishes are prepared with both i.e the whole fish sauce is used for cooking and the blood/viscera sauce finishes the dish. This sauce is truly fermented with bac­teria and low salt. It is quite remarkable that the Japanese word for viscera is gari!

In Roman cuisine, the use of garum was enriched with different combinations of the sauce - with honey (meligarum), vinegar (oxygarum), wine (oenogarum), water (hydrogarum), or dry spices (such as dill, oregano, coriander, celery, or even mint). These sauces were used as condiments for literally everything: from meat and fish to vegetables, salads, desserts, bread, and wine dipping.

The best way to use it in all recipes is thus; Take a litre of grape juice and reduce it by half, cool it and blend a bottle of Thai nam pla fish sauce with it. My favourite recipe that includes garum is "Honey-Glazed Prawns with Oregano and Black Peppers" a relatively simple dish, which I've made countless times as a starter in one of my ancient Greek themed dinners!

For a decent starter for two, take 8 large prawns 15ml of olive oil, 30ml of fish sauce 30gr of clear honey, a handful of chopped fresh oregano and black pepper. Place oil, fish sauce and honey in a saucepan, then add the prawns. Sauté gently in the ...

The Abbasid caliphate (750-1258) and its associated "golden age of Islam" is famous for a range of achievements in science, literature, and culture. The preservations and translations of ancient Greek texts to Arabic and the flow of discussion, philosophy, the merging of Persian, Greek and Arabic thought with Islam the countless inventions and new paths in science, mathematics and astronomy. All these are more or less known widely. Huge achievements. A mass of ancient texts were preserved for our eyes thanks to Persian scientists.

But what about...Pickles?! What do we know about this superb condiment I say?!!?

Well let's try and get a sense of place and a starting point to our story!

Baghdad was founded in 762 as The City of Peace.

The Abbasid empire stretched from the edges of India to the borders of Europe. Baghdad was the heart of the Islamic world and the centre of political rule. It was also the centre of the Translation Movement, when scholars from around the world came together at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, translating ancient Greek and Roman texts on subjects like algebra, medicine, and astronomy. Music, poetry and art flourished. The society of the Abbasid Caliphate was diverse and open. Think of it a little bit like the “Citadel” in Game of Thrones.

As a Metropolis of a vast empire, Baghdad it was a sprawling city with houses of main thoroughfares, connected by narrow, winding and shade-giving streets; all within earshot of the local mosque. Business and trade were kept to the main streets and public squares, bustling and noisy with its food stalls and many other traders. Gardens both public and private, were an imitation of paradise with attention and care to details. Huge water-raising machines could be seen pumping water from rivers into the fields and to the cities and houses.

In this hugely influential cultural city al-Baghdadi was born in 1239AD. He was a scribe, and was a compiler of an early Arabic cookbook of the Abbasid period, The Book of Dishes. Originally with 160 recipes but later 260 more were added.

Thank you and see you soon!

Music by Pavlos Kapralos and Motion Array (Arabian Nights, Barren Sands)

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-delicious-legacy.

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The ancients, -Greeks and Romans alike- where equally worried about health and food and the balance between a healthy diet and a delicious one.

More than in our days, diet played a role in preventing and curing diseases, and in fact it was one of the main areas of study at medieval medical schools.

Medical writers and doctors and philosophers of the ancient world, from Hippocrates, to Galen and Oreibasius to Haly Abbas in Islamic Persia al obsessed and thought about the connection of diet and healthy body.

The notion of humours and the idea that disease was related to some imbalance of them was only one of many theories in antiquity, some of which completely ignored them. For Galen the definitive theory was that articulated in the Hippocratic Nature Of Man. The nature of Man was made up of blood phlegm yellow bile and black bile, and it was through these that the body felt pain and maintained health. If their balance was disturbed the body experienced disease.

To find out more, listen to the episode!

The music on this episode was written and performed by the incredible Pavlos Kapralos.

Find out more here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzgAonk4-uVhXXjKSF-Nz1A

And don't forget to get your Greek delicacies from Maltby and Greek! You get a 15% discount with the code "delicious" online here:

https://www.maltbyandgreek.com/

As ever, please let me know your thoughts, on twitter or anywhere else you'll find me!

Enjoy,

Thom & The Delicious Legacy

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-delicious-legacy.

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Welcome to the latest episode of our archaeogastronomical adventures!

On this two part podcast, I am honoured to have Andrew Kenrick from University of East Anglia with me, who studied extensively about the Roman cuisine 2000 years ago. Specifically, he investigated a lot and he is very passionate about, the famous -and some will say infamous- gourmand Apicius. The only complete recipe book we have today from the ancient world bears the name of Apicius! Who was he? what did he do to change the course of food and gastronomy in the ancient world and also today? Andrew's knowledge on the subject is quite vast and some of the historical fact nuggets very fascinating! Together today we'll delve into the time of the early roman empire; a universe of exotic delicacies, extravagant luxuries, extreme ingredients and impossible journeys to find the tastiest food of the ancient world!

Part 1 will be a lot about the person Apicius, his life, his legends, his death. Plus all the gossip from ancient writers, authors, politicians...

Ancient Roman Music by amazing Pavlos Kapralos! Hope you'll enjoy!

Support The Delicious Legacy on Patreon for more exclusive content, recipes, and to get the episodes earlier!

For $3 a month you can get access to a wealth of exclusive and personalised content!

https://www.patreon.com/join/thedeliciouslegacy

Lots of love,

The Delicious Legacy

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-delicious-legacy.

If you love to time-travel through food and history why not join us at https://plus.acast.com/s/the-delicious-legacy.

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Hope everyone is well in these strange times and keeping safe and healthy!

Let's talk a bit about Roman Britain and how the Romans viewed these mysterious lands...

But, before that let's get some anecdotal accounts from our Mediterranean cousins about UK:

Cold. Wet. Foggy. Miserable. These are probably the main descriptions -unfair of course- that one gets from modern Italian (and Greek!) students after they've spent their first semester in UK universities, particularly in the Northern cities. Well nothing has changed since Caesar's time! Take the following lines:

'It is "the home of men who are complete savages and lead a miserable existence because of the cold; and therefore, in my opinion, the northern limit of our inhabited world is to be placed there" (II.5.8). By Diodorus Siculus an ancient Greek historian, known for writing the monumental universal history Bibliotheca historica, much of which survives, between 60 and 30 BC. Or the following: The nights are short (Caesar, Gallic Wars, V.13; Agricola, XII) and the weather miserable, with frequent rain and mists. "I don't want to be Caesar, stroll about among the Britons" Florus writes to Hadrian, "and endure the Scythian winters" (Historia Augusta: Hadrian, XVI.3). It is a savage place (ferox; Agricola, VIII) as are the fierce, inhospitable Britons who live there (Horace, Odes, III.4.33). Those near the coast in Kent may be more civilized, but in the interior they do not cultivate the land but share their wives with family members, live on milk and meat, and wear the skins of animals—behaviours so foreign to the Romans.

Until the Roman invasion, the most common dish would've been some short of pottage, a thick vegetable stew or soup flavoured perhaps with bog-myrtle, and served in bowls made from unleavened bread with the occasional salted pork, bacon or seafood and of course wild game. Everything changed after 43AD!

Cherry, plum, fig, cucumber, pea, chive, cabbage, lettuce, garlic, onion, marjoram, parsnip, possibly hare, (or could have been earlier) rosemary, turnip, pheasant... All introduced by the Romans...

Who Incidentally they've made the first burgers! Not the Americans! hahaahahaa! :-p

Anyway find out more about all of the above when you listen to the podcast!

Oh check this website with aerial photos of Roman forts and settlements in Britain:

https://www.cambridgeairphotos.com/themes/roman+fort/page5.html

Ancient Music Themes by Pavlos Kapralos

Music Theme for the ad provided by Aris Lanaridis

https://www.arislanaridis.co.uk/

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-delicious-legacy.

If you love to time-travel through food and history why not join us at https://plus.acast.com/s/the-delicious-legacy.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.