Sunday, June 21, 2009

Braised Squid, Roman Style


Dish: “In Lolligine in Patina” (A Pan of Squid)

Country of Origin: Italy (Roman Empire)

Year: Late 300s/ early 400s

Source: De re coquinaria by Caelius Apicius; translation through The Roman Cookery of Apicius by John Edwards.

After my last post I received a helpful suggestion from a friend on how to improve this blog: weird animals or animal parts. While this raises some questions about whether my friends have my best interests at heart, it is a good way to increase the entertainment value of this blog. Squid may not be especially weird, but since I can't find a butcher who will sell me flamingo meat, it will have to do for now.

De re coquinaria ("On the Subject of Cooking") is attributed to Caelius Apicius, a noted Roman glutton. He is said to have loved eating so much that he spent almost all of his wealth on food, and then, upon realizing he had little money left for MORE food, poisoned himself to avoid the horrors of starvation. This is a man who clearly understands food, and so I put myself in his capable hands for a dish aptly titled "A Pan of Squid." Here is a direct translation of the recipe:


A pan of squid: Mix pepper, rue, a little honey, stock, boiled wine, and drops of olive oil.

Dammit! Once again we have a recipe that is a list of ingredients, with no directions. This time there aren't even any quantities listed. John Edwards writes in the introduction that Apicius’s book was written for chefs, and his recipes were more suggestion than instruction. Luckily, Edwards also provides modern, modified recipes for many of Apicius’s recipes. I compared his recipe with the original, and with a third recipe for braised squid in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. I developed a workable recipe by combining these three, using Apicius's ingredients, Edwards's quantities, and Bittman's technique. (That recipe is reprinted at the end of this post, if anyone else out there is feeling adventurous).

SUBSTITUTIONS AND NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

1) Rue: Rue was a commonly used herb in Roman cuisine, for its supposed medicinal qualities. I learned that rue is a little more difficult to find these days, probably because it is narcotic in large doses, its juice is an irritant, contact with its leaves can cause dermatitis, and pregnant women are advised not to eat it. Apparently rosemary is a good subsitute. I chose to use rosemary rather than hunt down the crazy herb of death.

2) Boiled Wine: Roman wines were different from the wines of today, with a much higher sugar content. They were frequently used as a sweetener for sauces (as in this recipe). Boiled wine is wine reduced by half, to make it even sweeter. The original recipe called for boiled wine, Edwards's recipe does not. I used boiled wine.

3) Fish stock: I shamefully admit that I didn’t make my own fish stock, and instead used fish boullion. This is bending the rules I set down in the first post, but I don't think it's breaking them. I have already paid the price for it. The boullion made a stock that smelled like the fish food I once fed my goldfish. It was still usable, but there is no doubt in my mind that you would get a better flavor with freshly made fish stock.

COOKING

Most of what I found interesting about cooking this dish had to do with preparing the squid, something I’ve never done at home. This is an animal that seems like it was made to be taken apart. You rip off the head, and all the entrails come with it, leaving behind a tube of meat. At least, that's what happens in theory. In practice a few of my squid lift some of their less appetizing organs behind, and I had to dig them out. I popped the ink sac of one of them, and another one was full of little squid eggs. Let's get a close up of these guys:

Beautiful. Cleaning the animals took a long time (removing the skin, rinsing out all the ink), but once I finished, everything else was pretty easy. I chopped them into rings and gave them another rinse.

I boiled the wine and made my sauce (pepper, rosemary, honey, wine, fish stock) in a matter of minutes:


After sauteeing the squid with some olive oil, I added the sauce, covered it, and let it cook.

A little less than an hour later, I reduced the sauce until thick, and BOOM -- I had dinner.


THE TASTING

This was pretty damn good. Squid is often tough and rubbery, but braising it in the liquid for so long made it pretty tender. The flavor was equal parts sweet, spicy, and seafood. Squid has a distinct flavor, which really came through in this dish. I was also surprised by how much of a kick this had with only black pepper, a spice I normally consider the wussiest of the spices (for the record, most awesome: cumin). My biggest complaint was that the squid shrank a lot during cooking. What started out looking like a lot of food cooked away into a very small serving. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though: the flavors in this dish were good, but also very strong – and the amount of squid I ended up with was the perfect amount for tasting.

Overall Consensus: Delicious. If the preparation didn’t take so long, and if it didn’t cook down into non-existence, I would continue to make this on a daily basis with some slight changes. I'd recommend using regular wine instead of boiled wine (as Edwards suggests), which would cut back on the sweetness. Using a homemade fish stock would probably be better than the boullion. I would probably also double the amount of squid used if you want to make it a full meal -- a pound of pre-cleaned squid seems to be about a half pound of usable squid meat.

Final Grade: B

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The Recipe

1 lb. fresh squid

1 T. olive oil

½ t. ground pepper

¼ t. rosemary

1 t. honey

1 c. fish stock

¼ c. boiled white wine

Clean and cut up squid. Sautee in olive oil for 2 minutes. Meanwhile, crush pepper and rosemary together; combine with honey, fish stock and boiled wine in a pot and bring to a boil. Pour over the squid and simmer on low heat, covered, for 40 minutes. Uncover and increase heat to reduce sauce until thick (5-10 more minutes).

3 comments:

  1. Maybe I'll comment on everything. Maybe not. One question, and I think this goes for both the gruel and the squid: will we be seeing "full" meals in your blog? I like the individual pieces, but will we have any "odd combinations" as well as the well-suggested "odd ingredients"?

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  2. That's an interesting suggestion. I worry that a full meal might make a post that is simply too long for a blog format. After the tasting, we ended up turning the squid into a full meal by serving it over rice with some sauteed zucchini on the side -- I don't think this authentically Roman, though, and I would have to do a little deeper research to find out what might have been typically served with a dish like this.

    That being said, if I can find a good recipe or series of recipes for a complete meal, I may decide to tackle it.

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  3. May i suggest full meals for special occassions? I would love to see a traditional Christmas dinner / original thanksgiving / crazy other holiday feast of which i am unaware.

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