Columella Salad - Lettuce Begin!

Haha! What's life without a few terrible puns? This is the first recipe I went for to kick things off with the Ancient Romans. It's likely the Romans would have probably seen this as more of a lunch meal or as a side to go with a larger meal, but I like a good salad and I was excited to try this one. I found it on a website called 'Eight recipes from Around the Roman Table - Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome'  which is also a book written by Patrick Faas. 

It called not only for a butt tonne of mint, parsley and a lot of cheese, but also fresh coriander. My partner is one of the unfortunate souls who thinks coriander tastes like the Devil's own soap. I on the otherhand love it, I cannot get enough coriander in my life, but that's the way things are. Usually I would insist on the recipe staying exactly the same as the Romans would have had it, but I didn't want to be mean, especially on a Monday night. 

I also had to change up some of the ingredients, as my small local shop didn't have any leeks. 

Columella Salad

• 100g fresh mint (and/or pennyroyal)
• 100g fresh parsley
• 1 bunch of spring onions
• 100g rocket
• 200g salted fresh cheese
• vinegar
• pepper
• olive oil

The process is fairly simple to be honest. Chop up the mint, parsey, spring onions and cheese into bite size chunks, add all the ingredients to a mortal and pestle, whack 'em around. Stir in some vinegar and pepper. Put on a place, drizzle olive oil, and BOOM! You're done! 

I served mine with the bread I made previously and some more olive oil for dipping purposes. My partner was a little hesitant about the meal, due to the quite alarming amounts of parsley and mint in it. But we were both pleasantly surprised. It was really nice. People should make salads from herbs more often. Even though there wasn't any salt in the dish, there was a huge amount of flavour from all the herbs, onions, cheese and vinegar. 

Romans were apparently big on using their mortal and pestles for everything, which is why I did find it weird a salad was made in this way. I guess because it's basically unheard of now to deliberately bruise salad leaves and herbs! But the flavour was very delicate, I expected the onions and mint to be really strong, but it seems bashing them all together meant their flavours mellowed out and merged with each other. Partner and I thought it would be a great salad to have at a BBQ during the summer, when you want something refreshing and light.

I jokingly asked my partner whether he thought I would get a film made about me and my blog, like Julie and Julia, you know, the one with Amy Adams and Meryl Streep. Partner said 'No, for two reasons. 1. You stole this idea from the BBC, so they've already basically made a film about it. And 2. You've already mentioned me disagreeing with you in your blog, so they can't really use that as a cause for drama, it would happen too early in the film.' 

Well I can dream! Some day a film will be made about me, panicking about my freshly made garum and my stodgy, sourdouogh loaf. Then at the last minute before dinner is served, the Romans who were going to come over for dinner will cancel, because it's raining or the Gauls are invading again! 

See you tomorrow for Honey Glazed Prawns (yum) and my ridiculous, overly ambitious dreams!