Four Sauces for a Chicken -- Sauce #1: Roman Empire!

I had company coming, someone who has been experimented on before at my table, so I felt like trying something fun.  I decided to buy two roasted chickens and make sauces to be served with them.

But what sauces?  There are so many from a variety of cultures and eras.  Well, since my love for Roman Empire food is growing, I decided to try one that appeared to be a challenge to prepare.

This recipe comes from Cooking Apicius, by Sally Grainger.  I love this book and have used it several times before for this blog.  (Do a label search on "Roman Empire."  You will find them!)

ISBN 1-903018-44-7

This recipe is on page 60 and has the undistinguished title of

Sauce for Cooked Meat

Ms. Grainger explains that a person of the time would be eating while reclining on one side, using one hand to bring the food up to the mouth.  When at first she tried this sauce, she interpreted it in a modern fashion, making it "thin, hot, plentiful and pourable" and found it disappointing.  But "When I considered them more as a pickle or dipping sauce, the likely use of these sauces became clear."  In other words, the sauce needed to stick to the meat to avoid it dripping onto the diner.

The challenge, in my view, was to make this sauce and closely follow the complicated-looking directions.  Here goes!

1 heaping tsp cumin seeds
1 level tsp myrtle berries *  (see note below)
generous freshly ground black pepper
2 heaped tsp chopped fresh parsley
1/2 small leek with the dark green removed
2 hard-boiled eggs, shelled
2 dessert spoons honey
2 tbsp vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp fish sauce

Ignore the dry parsley.  It butted its way into the picture unannounced.

Roast and grind the cumin and myrtle, mix with the pepper and combine with the parsley.  Chop the leek and cook in a little water.  Strain and place in a food processor or large mortar and grind or process into a paste.  Add the cooked eggs and process or grind again.  Add the spice and herb mixture, honey, vinegar, oil and fish sauce and blend by pulsing a few times.  Tip into a bowl and store until required.  Only store in the fridge if you are preparing or storing left-over sauce overnight.  Preparing it the day before does improve the flavour but bring back to room temperature before serving.

My Notes

*Special note:  I do not have any myrtle berries.  Apparently I could grow them but not in time for today's cooking spree.  To find a substitute I turned to The Epicenter which had a description:

Myrtle seeds are purple-black berries that are used whole or coarsely ground.  Its leaf is used whole or chopped.  Myrtle berries are sweet, with juniper and rosemary-like flavors.  The leaves have spice, astringent, and bitter taste [sic] with a refreshing, fragrant, and orangelike aroma.

Ah ha!  I decided to substitute in juniper berries, which I toasted, and then added a pinch of dried rosemary before grinding.

I toasted the juniper separately from the cumin seeds but combined them in the mortar.  I wasn't sure how long to toast the juniper but I stopped when I sniffed the berries and got a lovely resiny scent.

Toasted.

Ground (includes the rosemary).

I used about 1/2 teaspoon of ground pepper.

Honest, that was the smallest leek I could find in the store!  I used this much of it:

I used one of those big white pieces.

To cook the leeks, I put them in a pan with enough water to cover.  They simmered for a short while -- I stopped cooking them when most of the pieces were transparent.

In the beginning.

Processing that small amount of cooked leeks in my food processor was probably the most challenging part of making this sauce.  I had to stop it many times to scrape the leeks down off the walls.  But with persistence, I got it to nearly a paste consistency.

Adding the eggs helped even more.

I chose to use red wine vinegar for this recipe.

The instructions say to just pulse the mixture a few times after adding the herbs and spices and liquids, so I did.  But I wasn't convinced it was that well mixed.  So I stirred it after it went into the bowl.

It made about 3/4 of a cup.

The Verdict

I served it with thin slices of chicken for dipping.  We also had some fresh bread and a simple green salad.

Both light and dark meat.

I put all the sauces on plates.  There was one set of plates to be shared between every two people.

Roman sauce on the far left.  And this gives you a preview of the other sauces!

The idea was to dip your meat into the sauce and eat it but there was a problem.  The sauce was too thick to allow for easy dipping!  We ended up spooning some onto our plates and then spreading the sauce onto each piece.

You can see how firm the sauce is.

So how did it taste?

It was very intriguing.  Creamy, lightly spiced, slightly sweet, a little rich with a good mouthfeel.  It was hard to taste individual flavors but the blend was lovely.  The more I eat food with cumin, the more I love it and this sauce was no exception.  Success!

My guest tasters all enjoyed it.  Most of us agreed it was the best sauce of the four.  I certainly did.

I think the thickness was just right once I took it all out of the food processor, however the sauce sat for several hours before dinner and I think it thickened up.  If this happens again, I would double check the consistency just before serving and thin it with a little vinegar as needed.

As for the preparation challenge, I was pleasantly surprised to find it easy to make.  I thought the toasting, grinding, cooking, processing steps would be difficult but they weren't.  It is a definite do-again recipe.

I think I could just eat this sauce with a spoon.  Yes, it is that good.