Earth-Adapted Recipes: Seafood Stew, by Way of Apicius

This is the first installment of an occasional feature we’re calling “Earth-Adapted Recipes,” featuring our attempts to cook and eat dishes from various geeky sources – not just Dune, Redwall, and A Song of Ice and Fire. Some of them will even be from my own books! Hope you enjoy.

Recipe to be found in my newsletter and on Patreon.

We’ve instituted a new tradition around chez Mathieu – on Saturdays, your resident Shabbos goy (me) prepares lunch. This means that both my wife and daughter can rest on their holiest of holy days, and as a Quaker, I find cooking no less holy than anything else. Last Saturday, I looked around the contents of our fridge and freezer as Melissa asked, “so, what do you have in mind for that Trader Joe’s seafood mix?” It was already two weeks old and would need to be all-dressed to serve.

Then I said “…what if I served it ancient Roman style?”

I popped open a copy of Apicius and prepared a marinade (because at the end of the day, I still learned to cook out of a wok, marinade the meat in the cooking sauce, and add vegetables “in order”). I waited an hour, chopping vegetables and doing dishes in a desultory manner, turned on the flame, hoped for the best, and half an hour after “le feu vive!” I had a meal worthy of Augustus’ table on my own. Even Lyra loved it – though Lyra loves Papa’s cooking generally.

It doesn’t look like much (most European food didn’t before the Columbian Exchange), but it tasted amazing. It was sweet, peppery, rich, filling, and rustic. Bread and oleogarum and wine, and the beautiful, beautiful seafood stew.

Ingredients:

The fish marinade

• 1 Trader Joe’s seafood medley
• About a cup of Sangiovese (cheap)
• Olive oil
• Lea & Perrin’s Worcestershire sauce (or South Asian fish sauce)
• Dry sherry vinegar
• Salt
• Pepper
• 1 clove shallot
• Italian spices (terragon, oregano, marjoram, thyme, and rosemary)

The rest:

• 1 onion
• 3 stalks celery (reserve leaves)
• Chicken (or fish) stock (about three cups, ideally homemade)
• Can of Great Northern or other white beans

The sides:

• Homemade sourdough bread
• Oleogarum (oil & Worcestershire
• The Sangiovese

Instructions

1. Prepare the marinade – pour some oil, a few splashes of wine, and two drizzles of Worcestershire sauce into a largeish glass bowl. If you’re using south Asian fish sauce instead, make it one drizzle. Mince a shallot clove and throw it in. Add sherry vinegar, salt, black pepper, and Italian spices to taste.
2. Take out the frozen seafood mix and run under cool water until everything is separated and at least half-thawed. Add to the bowl of marinade, cover, shake, and store for at least one hour – longer is better.
3. Chop an onion roughly and three celery stalks into half-inch lengths (reserving the leaves). Drain and wash the beans. Slice your sourdough bread and prepare an oleogarum for the table.Oleogarum was a common “mother sauce” and condiment at Roman table – pour a splash of olive oil into a wide bowl (for dipping) and add two drizzles of Worchestershire sauce (or one drizzle of Asian fish sauce) and sprinkle in some salt and black pepper.
4. When ready, remove the seafood and marinade and any stock you have from the fridge (I’m the kind of person who saves chicken bones and makes stock when the chicken is starting to look dodgy, I happened to have some homemade on hand).
5. Heat a little olive oil in a deep saucepan (the one you make pasta in) on medium heat and add the onions. Stir fry until they’re pearlescent but not brown, then pour in a ladle-full of stock. Let that come to a boil and add the marinade, but not the seafood. Throw in the beans and the celery. Cook until everything is warm, melded, and cooked through – about ten minutes – stirring occasionally.
6. Add the seafood back in and cook for two or three minutes or until everything is opaque. Turn off the stove.
7. Serve the mare cibus apicianum in a big communal bowl on the table with the ladle in, reserving a regular soup (or salad) bowl for each person. Place the oleogarum where everyone can reach it.
8. Serve with the sliced sourdough bread and the Sangiovese and water (of course wine and water, what are we, barbarians?).
9. A suitably-educated baby or toddler can eat the crumb of the bread and the bits of the dish if they’re chopped small enough for their teeth. Mine certainly enjoyed Papa’s cuisine.