Roman banquet

The new Eduqas GCSE includes an option for one paper to look at some aspects of Roman Civilisation. One of those aspects includes the Roman dinner party - how could we study this without a taste of the food itself?

The challenge was to find recipes that had easy ingredients and methods, and could be cooked, eaten, and cleared up within an hour.

We chose: isicia omentata (basically beef burgers), moretum (lots of hard cheese grated with LOTS of garlic), mykai (mushrooms in honey and fish sauce), flat breads and mushy peas. For pudding we had globuli (deep-fried ricotta balls with honey). All washed down with a cup of posca (red wine vinegar, honey and water)

Result? Lots of mess, a disaster with the flatbreads, but otherwise a rather delicious feast that barely over-ran into their next lesson (Sorry other teachers!). Huge thanks are due to the Food Tech. department for putting up with our amateur approach.

First, the isicia omentata:

Including a rather unsuccessful attempt to make it with veggie-mince (the mince's fault, not the student).

Next, the flatbreads, with a last-minute dash to rescue the boys who had fallen woefully behind in their task:

Meanwhile there were peas mushing, and mushrooms sauteeing:

On the far side of the kitchen, it was an oasis of calm as the dessert group worked beautifully efficiently together to mix, form, and deep-fry our globuli. They even had time to "drizzle", having already made the very garlicky cheese: