Chicken with Sweet and Sour Dipping Sauce

Chicken with ancient roman sweet and sour dipping sauce, sautéed kale, and beets. Wine: Neethlingshof Chenin Blanc 2018.

The feature attraction of this meal was the dipping sauce. It is from a book I’ve been wanting to cook from for a while called Cooking Apicius. Apicius wrote a cookbook in 1st Century Rome. This book interprets and adapts the recipe for modern kitchens and ingredients while trying to stay as close to the originals as possible (adaptations are for equipment, and ingredients are only substituted when they are absolutely unavailable or, in at least one case, now known go be toxic). The combination of ingredients is unusual to a modern palate—including mint, dill seed, grape must syrup, date syrup, and garum (an ancient fish sauce: I used it’s modern descendent, colatura di alici), olive oil, and vinegar.

Verdict: I really liked it. My husband wasn’t a fan, though though it was interesting as an experience to sample ancient flavor combinations.