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:
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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.

 

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This building is situated along the west side of the Civic Forum to the north of the Temple of Apollo. An open portico, it faces on the Forum square and on the façade has eight large piers in brick which frame eight entrances. It was to house the warehouses and the grain market, but it had not yet been finished when the eruption of 79 A.D. struck. The internal walls are of rough masonry with no trace of intonaco and the roof had not yet been built. At present covered by a modern shed roof and closed by a gate, the portico is used as the storeroom for the archaeological finds. It contains a large quantity of amphoras and pottery of daily use, oil presses, capitals an ... continue

(Apic. 3, 2, 4) Ingredients:

• 8 small beetroot
• 100 ml mead (or sweet white wine with a tablespoon of honey)
• 40 ml olive oil
• Chicken pieces part-cooked in the oven (about 15 chunks)
• Sea salt
• Black pepper to taste

Instructions:
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Cleaned well the beetroot, put them in a saucepan and add the mead, olive oil, salt and pepper and enough water to cover. Bring the liquid to the boil, add the chicken and continue cooking until the beetroot are done. Drain and serve immediately.

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.