Taro - Ancient Roman Recipe

Welcome to our kitchen. Today we prepare an ancient Roman taro recipe, a simple yet tasty and aromatic dish that enhances a little-known ancient Roman and Mediterranean ingredient. We need some taro and then the ingredients for the sauce, garum, we'll talk later about it, then the spices, black pepper and cumin, and a few rue leaves. The intense flavor of rue can easily overpower the sauce. We use just a few leaves to reach a good balance between rue and spices. First, we grind in the mortar black pepper and cumin. This recipe is one of the few using taro from the collection attributed to Marcus Gavius Apicius. In other recipes, the author pairs taro with chicken, veal, duck, or crane. We suggest also pairing it with fish, for example, with the ancient Roman sea bass you will find suggested at the end of this video. Taro, known by ancient Romans with the name Colocasia, was cultivated in ancient Mediterranean, especially in Egypt, but also in the Italic Peninsula as reported by the ancient Roman agronomist Columella. In this sauce, we'll use garum. Garum was a fish sauce widely used in ancient Mediterranean. It was a staple ingredient in ancient Roman cuisine. It was produced with different species of fish, sometimes with spices, but often with just fish and salt. Modern-day Southeast Asian fish sauces are produced in the same way as some types of garum, and you can use them to substitute it. Then, we finely mince the rue. Rue is often used in ancient Roman cuisine. If you don't have it, you can substitute it with another aromatic herb, like mint. The taste is very different, but you will have a delicious sauce anyway. Now we boil taro. The cooking time changes depending on the size of your taro. Meanwhile, we cook the sauce. We pour in a pan olive oil and garum. We add a bit of honey and let it caramelize a little. Then we add the spices and the starch diluted in water. When the starch thickens the sauce, we add the rue. Cook it for a few seconds, and the sauce is ready. When taro is done, we peel it. You can peel it before cooking it if you prefer. The original recipe doesn't give instructions about this step. Now we are ready to serve. We plate the taro coated with the sauce. This simple and tasty dish, alone or served with meat or fish, is a delicious way to rediscover an often forgotten ingredient widely used by ancient Romans and other Mediterranean populations.