The Romans had two main daily meals, but they often added a breakfast of bread soaked in wine, grapes, olives, milk and eggs. The midday meal was a light affair of cold dishes.<\/p>\n
Dinner was the main meal: a feast of hors d’oeuvres (mixed seafood) followed by game, pork, veal, goat, fowl and, especially, fish and finally sweets with a honey base, fresh and dried fruit.<\/p>\n
These courses were accompanied by sweet, scented wines, as well as often having interludes for entertainment.<\/p>\n
Cuisine had thus become a refined pleasure and, for some, a show of wealth and originality, as in the famous banquets of Lucullu and Trimalchio.<\/p>\n
A Roman Meal<\/strong><\/p>\n Unfortunately for the modern cook quantities of ingredients were not given in recipes until about the 17th century. All I can suggest is use your skills as a cook!<\/p>\n Gustatio – starter<\/strong><\/p>\n French Bean & Chickpea Salad<\/p>\n Fresh French Beans and cooked Chickpeas are served with salt, cumin, oil and a little wine<\/p>\n Primae Mensae – Main Course<\/strong><\/p>\n Honey Glazed Ham (baked in a pastry case)<\/strong><\/p>\n Boil the ham with about 1\/2-lb of dried figs and 3 bay leaves. Remove the skin and make criss-cross incisions, which you fill with honey. Next make a paste of flour and oil (1lb flour and enough oil to make a manageable pastry). Roll out the pastry and cover the ham. Bake in the oven, remove the pastry when it is cooked and serve the ham as it is. or<\/p>\n Patina of Sole with herb sauce<\/strong><\/p>\n Beat and clean the soles and place them in a shallow pan. Add oil, liquamen (a very strong fish stock, with anchovies – try anchovy essence) and wine. While the fish is cooking pound pepper, lovage, oregano, ground well, pour on some of the fish stock, add raw eggs and work into a smooth mixture. Pour over the soles and cook over a low fire. When the mixture has set sprinkle with pepper and serve.<\/p>\n Boiled baby marrow and carrots with a cumin sauce Serve the carrots raw with salt, oil and vinegar. Boil the marrows, then fry and arrange in a shallow pan. Pour over the cumin sauce with a little wine added. Bring to the boil and serve.<\/p>\n Cumin Sauce – Pound together, pepper, cumin and a little rue, blend with liquamen and vinegar. Add a little defrutum (substitute reduced grapefruit juice) to give colour. Bring it to the boil three times.<\/p>\n Secundae Mensae<\/strong><\/p>\n Dessert Dates fried in honey Fresh Grapes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":703,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-roman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.933.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.933.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.933.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.933.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.933.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.933.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":640,"href":"http:\/\/www.933.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions\/640"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.933.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.933.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.933.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.933.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}