EMBRACTUM BAIANUM (Baian Stew)

(Apic. 9, 11) Ingredients:

• 20 oysters (tinned will do if you can't find fresh)
• 20 venus clams
• 40 mussels
• 8 small squid cleaned and cut into rings (keep the tentacles intact to garnish)
• 100 g roasted pine nuts, roughly chopped
• 2 celery sticks
• Rue, finely chopped
• 10 pitted dates, chopped
• Liquamen (or salt)
• 50 ml passum (or white wine)
• Olive oil
• Pepper
• Ground coriander seed
• Ground cumin

Instructions:
-------------
Soak the oysters, clams and mussels in cold salted water for a few hours so that they open and purge any sand inside. Replace the water after the first hour to remove any sand. Pour some olive oil in to a large heavy-bottomed saucepan and add the pine nuts, celery, dates. Cook gently without burning. After a few minutes of continual stirring add the rinsed and dried molluscs (in their shells, discarding any which have not opened and which do not close again when you tap then on the table) and the squid. Stir them in and increase the heat. Add the wine and allow this to boil (removing the alcohol) before adding the passum and the rue. Cook over a medium heat until the molluscs steam open (should take about five minutes) then season with pepper and pour into a bowl. Arrange the squid tentacles on top and add some freshly-chopped parsley to garnish.

 

Why do not you arrange with us an amazing day in the Gulf of Naples - a private tour (just for you) with a comfortable limousine or minivan with driver and an English-speaking tour guide? We have organized for you a great guided tour to Naples-Pompeii-Sorrento-Amalfi Coast (Positano). Contact us by e-mail info@pompeii.org.uk for further info.

This house, with its classical layout around an atrium and a peristyle, belonged to the banker of Pompeii, and his entire archives consisting of 154 waxed writing tablets dating between 53 and 62 A.D. were found intact. These consisted of sale contract for land, animal or slaves and receipts for the payment of colonial taxes, as L.C. Jucundus was also the official tax collector.
The bronze portrait – commissioned by the freedman Felix – found in the tablinum of the house gives us a clear image of what his father looked like. In this house, researchers found two marble bas-reliefs (both subsequently stolen). One of them depicts the Temple of Jupiter which whose d ... continue

(Apic. 6, 8, 13) Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken
• 2 + 1 tbsp liquamen
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1 cup white wine
• 5 bunch coriander
• 1 onion
• 3 + ½ tbsp honey
• 1 cups milk
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp lovage (or celery)
• 1 tsp oregano
• Flour
• Salt to taste

Instructions:
-------------
Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper and cook in oven, 200° for 70 minutes, adding liquamen, oil, wine, coriander and onion; stir ... continue

Love was a common topic of conversation in Pompeii. Feelings, passions, poetic love, sex, homosexuality, prostitution and so forth were all part of daily life and not a source of prejudice. The concept of “obscenity” seems to have been unknown. Love and sex were considered earthly practices of a man’s life that were encouraged by the benevolence of Venus. The thousands of examples of graffiti found on the town’s walls are unequivocal proof of what the people of Pompeii thought about love and sex.