Recipe: Varo's Pullet, from the Prawns of Lebowa

The Prawns of Lebowa is one of my current works in progress and is the third in The Collector of Tales Trilogy. Expected completion is end of August 2011. It is set in a kind of Classical world, albeit at some point in the future, rather than the past. (Can you have a classical world in the future tense?). The main character, the Collector, is a foodie and hence this collection of recipes in the previous and in the next blog. (Come to think of it, the food fascination is evident in the title of the book as well, although it is also a play on the popular misconception that 'pawns' in chess are actually called 'prawns'.)

Before you start

Looking at these two recipes ( and the third to follow tomorow) you may wonder whether or not they actually hold together and whether or not the three of them will actually look and feel like a meal when you have them in front of you. Actually it works surprisingly well even without any form of starch. You could add bread if you were desperate I guess but I don't think that it adds and it could possibly take away from the experience. Yes the carrots are sweet but the spices are heavenly and the fish sauce combines well with the sweetnessof the honey ( I used a basic range honey from a well known supermarket at the cost of about 67p for 340g). Besides cumin (tomorrow) is always as winner with carrots ( unless you have an allergy).

Don't be put off by the smell of the cooking liquor for the chiken when you start out. There was a collective cry of horror from my kids when I first put nam pla, oil and wine in the pan but it mellows as the cooking time progresses. Equally, don't be tempted to seal the chicken or sear it before you add it to the liquor and I think that boned thigh is preferable to bone-in. Don't use breast though. I have tried that and I think that it has insufficient taste and substance for this dish. If you don't like the idea of adding double cream then please see the Notes and Comments below where I refer to the original Latin recipe and the use of milk and egg white. Yes, egg white- not yolk - I haven't tried this yet but will update the recipe once I have.

Finally, don't add salt unless the recipe calls for it. The fish sauce does most of the work in this department and we use knives and forks rather than fingers. There is no point in being a barbarian if you can't stab your meat!

Ingredients:

• 1.4 kg boned chicken thighs


• 3 tbsp nam pla (for liquamen)


• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil


• 250ml white wine (not too dry but I don't think it really matters)


• 1 tsp white pepper corns


• 100ml double cream


• 60ml the cooking liquor (see method)

Method:

Mix the nam pla, olive oil and wine in a dish that can be covered. I use a tagine for this as it allows the food to steam nicely.

At this point if you want to you could add a small leek, some coriander leaf and summer savory to the liquor in a bunch that can be removed later.

When the liquor is hot, add the chicken , turning as the meat turns white to ensure even coverage. Cover and leave to cook. Upwards of 40 minutes.

When the chicken is cooked, remove it from the liquor and set aside .If you added the leeks, coriander and savory, remove this now. I didn't use them.

Keep about 60ml of the cooking liquor in the pan.

Pound the white peppercorns in a pestle and mortar and add it to the remaining liquor then add the cream and bring back to the heat. Allow to thicken slightly and then return the cooked chicken and serve immediately with the other two recipes set out on this page as side dishes.

Sorry, no pictures taken of this one last time I made it.


Notes and comments:

As with many things, the recipe is not entirely original. It is based, as many of the recipes on this page are, on a 4th or 5th Century (AD) Book called De Re Coquinaria (On Cooking) , possibly written by an otherwise unknown chap called Caelius Apicius. Whoever the author, it was not the 1st Century gourmet, Marcus Gavius Apicius, who , according to Seneca, poisoned himself when he found that his personal wealth had dropped from 100 million to less than 10 million sestertii and he feared dying in poverty. What a plonker!

I have cut down and adapted the recipe where necessary. For example, the Roman Fish Sauce is not currently available and I have used Nam Pla instead. It seems to me that given the method of concoction, these were likely to be pretty similar in taste. Equally, one of the staples of the Roman culinary experience was a plant known as laser which is now seemingly extinct. This appears to be a form of giant fennel that grew on the coastal regions in present day Libya. Extinction was the result of over harvesting as apparantly the plant did not lend itself to cultivation and crops generally had to be taken from the wild. I have not used leek, coriander or summer savory in my recipe but I have a mind to try that out soon also.

The matter of the thickener for the white sauce is also a matter of adaptation. The actual text according to the translations that I have read says thicken the sauce with beaten whites of egg ( albamentis ovorum tritis) This is unusual to say the least and I have not myself used this yet. Obviously if it is a white sauce it is not going to have egg yolk, nor as I have seen suggested do I think that it should have mashed up boiled white of egg - presumably taken from the latin tritis (pounding) . The sense of it seems to be to use the liquid albumen, beaten. I chickened out ( as it were) and use cream instead of milk and egg white but now that I like the taste of the sauce I'll go back and attempt egg white.

The Spicy Lentils or Lenticula of yesterday actually comes, not from de re coquinaria, but from a recipe adapted from a 6th Century (AD) cook book called De Observatione Ciborium Epistula by a chap called Anthimus. Anthimus was a Byzantine Greek who had the good fortune to be Ambassador to the King of the Franks - I don't know which one. Lucky man... he must really have enjoyed that life!