Rome – Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones

September 1, 2017September 10, 2017

Cooking Hannibal Through Thirty-Six Inches of Rainfall: It’s All About Love.

Rain falls for six days, rain falls for one hundred and forty-four hours, rain falls for eight thousand six hundred and forty minutes, and so on. As with Aureliano Segundo who fights boredom during the four years, eleven months, and two days rain falls in Gabriel Garcia’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, I have … Continue reading Cooking Hannibal Through Thirty-Six Inches of Rainfall: It’s All About Love.

September 23, 2016

Dreams Of Mustard Greens, Pigs And Shrimp.

A dissolute aristocrat dreams Don Quixote who dreams Miguel Cervantes writing his novel Don Quixote who dreams Pablo Picasso painting two lonely figures on a hill. Our narrator dreams the Knight of La Mancha dreaming an inn as a castle, prostitutes as maidens, and stockfish as trout. I read of Castile and Alcalá de Henares … Continue reading Dreams Of Mustard Greens, Pigs And Shrimp.

January 2, 2015

What Happens When A Dead Roman Cook Meets A Dead Gulf Coast Red Snapper? Let’s Find Out. Happy New Year!

Apicius’ eponymous cookbook dates from the first century to the fifth century CE as determined by the scholars who have translated and supplied a critical introduction to this 2006 CE edition of one of the ancient world’s great tomes of recipes. Quite a range of time–from let’s say Claudius, without forgetting Caligula, of course, onto … Continue reading What Happens When A Dead Roman Cook Meets A Dead Gulf Coast Red Snapper? Let’s Find Out. Happy New Year!

August 8, 2014

Rome: Porridge or Pig Stomach?

I’m in the beer section of a market, what to have? What to have? Ah, Dogfish Head, yes they have some rather . . . oh, an almost three-thousand year old beer recipe from Italy. I’ll take it. Birra Etrusca Bronze: drinking vessels in 2,800 -year-old Etruscan tombs. I taste wine? Sauturne? Fermented pomegranate? A … Continue reading Rome: Porridge or Pig Stomach?