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There's currently a thread on the Apicius e-mail list about what people have tried from other classical and pre-classical cuisines. Someone mentioned an interpretation I'd done of a beet dish called "tuhu" that had been online, but said he couldn't find it any more. Here's what I posted in response.

Hmm, I can't find that site either now. The page was titled "A Different Dinner" or something close to that, but it isn't turning up now. On the other hand, when I was looking in my files to see if I had an electronic copy of it (I know I have a hand-written one stuck between the pages of the book), I turned up the following amusement. I have no idea whether I've ever shared this in public before. It's a light-hearted fictional dramatization of an archaeology crew with a suspicious resemblance to the personnel of the Hittite class I took at Cal back in 2001. (I had worked up the above-mentioned version of the tuhu dish as refreshments for an afternoon seminar presentation given by the Dasha who appears in the story below.)

* * *
The dig had been uneventful until the afternoon we gathered around tablet YOS.11.26 in the sweltering shade of the cook-tent. Gary was still working the clay tablet over with a fine sable brush. Ilya was fiddling with the lights, trying to get the best angle for reading. Every time he moved one, I could see Gary twitch. Dasha had pulled the reference books and was working on a preliminary sketch of the tablet to frame the transcription. I set up the stove.

It was clearly another recipe tablet. The first two we'd found had been too fragmented to read more than random phrases -- this one was nearly whole, at least on the obverse. Gary finally set the brush aside and fumbled with his glasses.

"Ilya, will you leave those lights alone!" he snapped. When Ilya was around, everyone snapped eventually. I glanced over at Dasha and we rolled our eyes in unison. Gary cleared his throat -- embarassed by his outburst -- and leaned over the tablet. "A-na ... oh, bother. Well, it picks up again here. Sha shu-ur ... hmm, something something se-he-ru-tim."

"Birds," Ilya broke in. "It's a recipe for small birds. The same word appears in the sacred inventories of --"

"We are all quite aware of that," Gary said with exaggerated patience.

I refrained from pointing out that the statement was quite untrue, at least in my case, but I wasn't getting in between those two. I fumbled for my Turkish phrasebook and wandered over to where Husam, our camp cook was trying to nap. Only crazy foreign archaeologists worked at this time of day.

"?" I suggested. He raised one eyebrow. I threw away all sense of dignity and settled for communication. "Ba-kaaaawk, bahk bahk!" I flapped my elbows a couple time, then rubbed my stomach.

"Ah!" he said, nodding. Then he closed his eyes again. I was satisfied -- it would happen when it needed to happen. Not before, but not later.

When I got back to the others, Dasha had the first twenty or so lines sketched out and glossed. I glanced over the list. "Ok, birds, a piece of fat meat, 'wood'? Ok, maybe like sandalwood, but we haven't got any. 'Sibburatu'?"

Dasha thumbed through the Akkadian glossary. "Rue. What does that mean?"

"An herb," I answered. "People don't tend to cook with it much these days -- I have no idea where we'd find any. So that's two down. Onion, leek, garlic, 'samidu' ... has anyone figured that one out yet?"

The glossary was consulted once more. "Plante condimentaire non-identifiée, peut-être une alliacée."

"Right. Ok, I know we can get shallots, and we're running out of alliacious plants. Flour, milk, more leeks and garlic and samidu -- I want the Babylonian breath-mint concession. Oops, sure enough. Mint."

I scribbled down the gist of the text and wandered back to the stores. Soak sasku-flour in milk ... knead it with siqqu-brine ... knead in mashed milk and garlic ... let rise. "Look folks, we don't have time for all this today -- not if we want to eat at a reasonable hour." No one was paying attention. I made an executive decision and pulled out the bowl of dough Husam had mixed up that morning for the day's flat-bread. Basic dough was basic dough -- we could worry about the subtleties of sasku and siqqu some other time. I mashed up a couple cloves of garlic and chopped a medium leek then kneaded them into the dough. We had a couple of shallow pottery bowls that would serve to get the right shape. I split the dough in half, brushed it with olive oil, and pressed it into into the bowls. The idea was to make a bread casserole dish, bottom and top. Crumbled spearmint on top, then into the oven. The oven was terrible -- a propane-fired thing attached to the stove as an afterthought -- but it could manage something resembling 350 degrees, and I'd just have to keep an eye on it when it got close to done.

They were working through the second recipe. Ilya had managed to shift all the reference books to his corner of the table. Dasha was sketching furiously to keep up with Gary's reading.

"'Inúma bashlú ka...' We'll have to interpolate the rest of the line. 'Andahshi u kisímmam ...' Ilya, you're in my light."

Ilya moved marginally. "I don't see the 'am'."

"Of course you don't," Gary said irritably. "It's on the broken part. And you still couldn't see it if it were there because you're blocking the light."

I thought it was an opportune time to interrupt. "Have we got an ingredient list for this one yet? I've got the bread dishes going for the first recipe, but we don't have the rue and we don't have whatever kind of seasoning wood it's talking about."

"What's the problem?" Dasha asked.

"Well, I don't want to get too far away from the original, otherwise what's the point?"

"Dinner," Ilya said.

I sighed. "I meant, what's the point of trying to follow the tablet. If all you want is dinner, I won't bother."

"No," Dasha said quickly. "Of course we want you to try it."

"Ok, but I'd rather do something we actually have the ingredients for. What about the one you're working on now?"

Dasha looked over the text so far. "No bread in this one. Some sort of bird, mutton broth, salt, vinegar, samidu, leek, garlic, onion, kissimu, that's pretty much it. Kissimu?"

Ilya thumbed through the books. "Produit non liquide du lait."

[... the narrative ends here. Just to get it on the record, the above material is copyright 2001 to Heather Rose Jones. What follows is the translation of the recipes from Bottero.]

Detach head, neck and legs. Open their bellies and remove gizzards and pluck, then split and peel the membrane from the gizzards. Wash the birds and chop the pluck.

In a clean cauldron, put the birds, gizzards, and entrails. After heating it, remove the meat, and wash well in cold water. Wash a pot well and pour in and milk, and put it on the stove. Wipe carefully the birds, gizzards, and entrails. Sprinkle with salt and assemble all the ingredients in a pot. Add a piece of fat from which the gristle has been removed, pieces of 'aromatic wood' as desired, and stripped rue leaves. When it comes to a boil, add onion in moderation, samidu, leek and garlic mashed with onion, and a bit of cold water. Let simmer.

Meanwhile, soak cleaned sasku-flour in milk, and when it is well saturated, knead it with siqqu-brine. Then, being careful that it remains pliant, add, while continuing to knead, samidu, mashed leek and garlic, milk and some of the cooking juices. Divide the dough into two equal parts. Let one half rise and reserve in a pot; from the other half, back shaped sebetu-rolls in the oven, and remove when done. Knead more sasku-flour that has been soaked and saturated with milk, adding cooking juices and mashed leek, garlic and samidu to the milk. Take a makaltu-platter and line it (with the dough). Choose the makaltu-platter so that it covers the space taken up by the birds, and first sprinkle it with mint. Line it with the dough that you had reserved in the large vessel to make a cover. Then remove [the ... from the stove] and cover the stove's upper opening with it, putting two [...] thereon. Place the two dough-lined makaltu-platters on top. When cooked, remove from the stove and detach just the dough for the 'cover' from its platter, rub it with oil and reserve it on the platter until just before serving.

When the birds and broth are cooked, pound, mash and add leek, garlic and andahs[h]u. Just before serving, take the makaltu-platter with the bottom crust, and carefully arrange the birds on it. Scatter over the birds the chopped pluck and gizzards from the pot, and sebetu-rolls that were baked in the overn. Set aside the broth and cooking juices in which the meat cooked. Cover the assemblage with the crust cover and bring to the table.

B.

To prepare amursanu-pigeon in broth

Slaughter the amursanu-pigeon and pluck it, after having soaked it in hot water. Once plucked, wash it with cold water and skin the neck, leaving attached to the body the skin with its meat, and cut out the ribs. Open its underbelly and remove the gizzard and pluck. Wash and soak the bird in cold water. Split and peel the membrane from the gizzard. Cut open and chop the intestines.

To cook in broth, first put in a cauldron with the bird the gizzard, pluck, intestines [...] and head, as well as a piece of mutton, and heat. Remove from fire, wash well with cold water and wipe carefully. Sprinkle with salt and assemble all the ingredients in a pot. Prepare water; add a piece of fat from which the gristle has been removed, vinegar as required, [...] samidu, leek and garlic mashed with onion and, if necessary, a little water. Let simmer.

When cooked, pound and mash together to add to the dish leek, garlic, andahs[h]u and kisimmu. If there is no kisimmu add baru that has been mashed and pounded. Wipe the pigeon, which has been removed from the pot [...] the stove, whose fire you stoke to roast the legs at high heat, having first covered them with dough. Add the filets. [...]

When everything is cooked, remove the meat from the fire, and, before the broth cools, serve it accompanied by garlic, greens and vinegar. The broth can also be eaten later, by itself. Carve and serve.

* * *
My interpretation of an amalgam of these two dishes (not guaranteed to be closely authentic, but very tasty)

Easy version: Prepare (or obtain) your favorite yeast bread dough -- enough for one loaf. If you prepare it yourself, add one small onion, chopped, and several garlic cloves (to taste), mashed, while mixing the dough.

Hard version: [I seem to have left out the directions for whatever I considered the "hard version" to be.]

After the first rising, divide the dough in two portions. Oil two pie tins. Roll or press the portions of dough into flat rounds slightly larger than the pie tins. Line the pie tins with the dough, letting the edges hang over the rim slightly. Sprinkle with mint. If you used store-bought dough, also sprinkle with chopped onion and mashed garlic, in slightly smaller quantities than given above. Allow to rise a second time, then bake until done.

Birds: half a chicken, cut in pieces, or
one game hen, cut in half, or
two semi-boneless quail, or
the equivalent

1 piece somewhat fat beef (for broth), perhaps 1/4 lb.

Take the piece of beef and simmer it in 1 quart of water until a broth is formed. Place the bird(s) in the broth and simmer until cooked (10-20 minutes, depending on what you used). Remove the birds, pat dry, and arrange in one of the bread "bowls". To the remaining broth, add one medium onion, chopped, one large leek, chopped, 1/2 cup shallots, ditto, around 4 (to taste) cloves garlic, mashed. Simmer until the ingredients have pretty much dissolved and the broth is reduced to a thick slurry. Add 1 cup sour cream and mix. Pour this over the birds in the bread dish, cover with the other half of the bread dish, and return to a hot over to brown the cover slightly. Serve hot.