Sprouts and Bacon - Roman Twist on a Modern Recipe

I took inspiration tonight from an article called, Not Quite Spaghetti: 10 Ancient Rome Recipes We Want To Try, 10 We Would Rather Leave Behind In History. Snappy!

"It consists of boiling young cabbage sprouts seasoned in cumin, salt, wine, oil, pepper, and mint. If that is not flavorful enough, one must pour pure wine, or vinegar mixed into oil onto the salad. A modernized addition would be goat cheese and croutons, or one can always just leave it in a more simple arrangement."

I probably should have read this, because I didn't and consequently I didn't do anything like this. So have deemed mine something of a modern twist that I think the Romans would appreciate. I think one realises that you are an adult when you start finding Christmas stressful, rather than exciting, but you begin to truly appreciate the little bit of green a sprout brings to Christmas dinner! Here's my way of making Roman sprouts without boiling the crap out of them!

Ingredients

• 500g sprouts
• 2 tbsp honey
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 3 tsp of fresh parsley
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 4 rashers of bacon
• Optional: Roman bread and hard cheese (e.g. pecorino romano)
  
  

Method

• Preheat oven to 200C (190C Fan).
• Trim and clean the sprouts. Cut in half if they are large. Pour into a baking tray.
• In a bowl combine 2 tbsp honey, 2tbsp olive oil, 1tbsp fish sauce, 1tsp black pepper and 1tsp cumin seeds. 
• Cut up the fresh parsley and bacon, add to the baking tray with the sprouts. Pour the sauce from the bowl and give everything a good stir.
• Put in the oven and cook for 20 minutes, check half way through to ensure nothing is burning and stir the sprouts again.
• Once done, serve with Roman style bread and olive oil. Add cheese if you want to be extra fancy!

They were really delicious and partner appreciated them enormously, as they are very similar to the ones I usually make. The addition of the fish sauce really added a savoury, umami flavour and I am starting to see why the Romans were such fans of it. It adds an incredibly amount of depth to often very simple food, so maybe that's why it appealled to both rich and poor, especially when the main ingredients for it is so easy to come by! And maybe why seemingly so many Roman recipes I've come across don't ever feel the need to add salt. It may just be a coincidence, but it's interesting to realise that perhaps the Romans weren't so heavily reliant on sea salt to add flavour to their food, as we are today. 

I think we often too readily make assumptions about the state of people's health and the quality of their diet based on the average lifespan, which is often scewered heavily because so many babies and children died before reaching adulthood. And while poorer Romans certainly didn't have the luxury of being able to have lots of meat, dairy, fruit and honey, they did have a varied and healthy diet.