Passport & Plate - AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECIPE

archaeologist — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 09:52:37 GMT

Ingredients
My text, photos and ingredients are all in one block - 4 files in .jpg But I did not manage to upload them in the previous step! Please see them here:

http://olegivik.narod.ru/___/1.jpg
http://olegivik.narod.ru/___/2.jpg
http://olegivik.narod.ru/___/3.jpg
http://olegivik.narod.ru/___/4.jpg

How to prepare this recipe
It is all described (with photos) in the files:
http://olegivik.narod.ru/___/1.jpg
http://olegivik.narod.ru/___/2.jpg
http://olegivik.narod.ru/___/3.jpg
http://olegivik.narod.ru/___/4.jpg

The story behind this recipe
To tell the truth, this is not my own recipe – this is a recipe of a cook of our expedition. But I took some part in creating it…
I am a writer. In summer I work in archaeological expedition and in winter I write books on archaeology and history. Once I wrote a book about ancient food. I took it to the expedition (it was in Russian prairies, far from civilization) and I thought that it would be fine to feed our guys with something ancient. I showed the book to our cook Tatiana and said: “We excavate a Scythian burial mound, so try to make something Scythian for dinner”.
Tatiana opened the book and said: “Wow! Scythians ate meat and milk. And we have only condenced milk and tinned meat!” I thought it over and remembered that Romans visited this territory in ancient times. “Well, let it be ancient Roman food”. And I gave her the book and went away.
It takes a long time to cook on a campfire. I came back in the evening and Tatiana was still busy. I looked into a cauldron and saw stewed buckwheat. Eggplants mixed with onion frizzled in a frying pan.
“What are you doing?” – I cried.
“Ancient Roman dinner”, – said Tatiana, spilled the content of a frying pan into the cauldron and added a piece of butter.
“They had no buckwheat in ancient Europe!”
“Well, Romans might occasionally receive it from Northern China”.
“They had no Eggplants!”
“Well, who can swear that some Indian merchant did not present it to Caesar once…”
“Romans did never use butter! Only barbarians did!”
“Well, imagine that I am a barbarian slave who made some butter for her owners – by mistake…” And she added a spoon of sugare into a cauldron.
“Romans used sugare as medicine! They got it from India and it was too expensive for cooking!”
“Well, we are all crazy here… Some medicine will be useful for any of us…”
Tatiana declared that we shall eat traditional food that Scythian slaves cooked for Roman caesars when they felt sick. She said that she used my book to find the recipe. Everybody liked it and ate until full.