We succeeded in recreating Neolithic flatbread!

This is about as close as I can figure out how to make bread as it would have been baked in one of the first daily bread-making cultures, ca. 9,000 years ago. I’ll let you judge the authenticity…but the taste is fantastic. 🍞🧵 I should start from the beginning. I went to the Çatalhöyük site in central #Turkey. A proto-urban Neolithic community, pop. as high as 8,000, inhabited for 1000+ years starting ca 7200 BCE.

Why has olive oil suddenly become a luxury item?

Since I took this photo, in a supermarket on #Italy's Lago di Garda, prices have doubled, sometimes tripled.

Reasons: drought. Bad storms at harvest time. In some areas, a labour shortage.

But another tragedy is happening... 🧵 It's a bacteria that's sickening trees in the south of #Italy. Some of those that are dying are monumentali, thousands of years old...

It took 4 months of fermentation, but I made my own garum (or more accurately, liquamen)—the ancient Roman fish sauce

To avoid botulism, I did it under the supervision of Sally Grainger, the British author of The Story of Garum. Some of the key steps...
🐟 I started with small, whole sardines, purchased frozen and then left to thaw (from a Portuguese grocery in #Montreal)

The disappearance of silphion is one of the great mysteries of food history. The plant's resin was a secret flavor enhancer, like garum, and worth its weight in silver. But it vanished 2,000 years ago—Nero was said to have eaten the last stalk.
We think we've found it...🌼🧵



Not to boast, but I do believe that I was the first person from west of the Bosphorus Straits to have tasted Silphion in 2,000 or so years when I chewed on the (pleasantly bitter) resin from the root-ball on the flanks of an extinct volcano.
OK, kind of boasting...

We succeeded in recreating a Neolithic flatbread!

This is about as close as I can figure out how to make bread as it would have been baked in one of the first daily bread-making cultures, ca. 9,000 years ago. I’ll let you judge the authenticity…but the taste is fantastic. Bread thread 🍞🧵 follows...

It took 4 months of fermentation, but I made my own garum (or more accurately, liquamen).

I can now confirm it was under the supervision of Sally Grainger, world's leading authority on the subject, author of The Story of Garum.
Here's how I did it...
🐟🧵 I started with small, whole sardines, purchased frozen and then left to thaw (from a Portuguese grocery in #Montreal)

Silphion in #Paris!

You can see the Arcesilas Cup, in the medals room of the Bibliothèque Nationale.

6th-cent. BC Spartan vase thought to show Cyrenaican king, and workers weighing silphion in scales for transport across the Mediterranean. Some scholars dispute this, say wool is being weighed on the scales. The white oblongs have been interpreted as silphion resin mixed with bran to stabilize the product for shipping. Monkeys, parrots, lizards suggest African setting.

This is Parthian silphion, or laser.
It is also from a Ferula species, but it is not the same thing as the Silphion found in Turkey.
Known as asafoetida, aka Teufelsdreck, aka “devil’s dung," aka hing in Indian cuisine. Sally Grainger used this as a control in our cooking experiments in the botanical gardens in #Istanbul. It is infinitely less sophisticated, and far more pungent.

A year ago I boarded a train in #Istanbul to investigate one scientist's claim of rediscovering Silphion, a legendary herb thought to have gone extinct 2,000 years ago.

It still grows in the heart of #Turkey—and it's delicious.
More in my @NatGeo feature:
nationalgeographic.com/history/articl… All involved were able to keep this secret for a year while the Nat Geo team put together this amazing
package. Thanks to @kristinromey @_alicezoo @mallorybenedict Nirupa Rao

When I visited their Ali Baba's cave of an HQ in #Montreal yesterday, I asked the Spice Hunters / Chasseurs d'épices Ethne and Philippe de Vienne of @epicesdecru what some of the great but little appreciated spices were... This one is beautiful: marigold petals, which in Georgia (the European Georgia, bien sûr) are used in cuisine; ground to add colour to soups and rice dishes; often used with dill and coriander.

After making my own garum, I've put it to good use making a 2,000-year-old recipe: Aliter lenticulam ("Lentils Another Way") from Apicius.

Definitely the best lentil dish I've ever made—and incredibly unusual flavour palate. The Romans were on to something! Here’s how I did it… Here's the whole recipe. No measurements provided! The recipes in Apicius, attributed to a 1st-century AD gourmand, are short on details...and literary style.

It's took a long time—4 months of fermentation, in fact—but I made my own garum (or more accurately, liquamen), under the supervision of the world's leading archaeological authority on the subject. (Looking at you, Sally!) Here's how I did it...
(thread) I started with small, whole sardines, purchased frozen and then left to thaw (from a Portuguese grocery in #Montreal)