EMBRACTUM BAIANUM (Baian Stew)

(Apic. 9, 11) Ingredients:

• 20 oysters (tinned will do if you can't find fresh)
• 20 venus clams
• 40 mussels
• 8 small squid cleaned and cut into rings (keep the tentacles intact to garnish)
• 100 g roasted pine nuts, roughly chopped
• 2 celery sticks
• Rue, finely chopped
• 10 pitted dates, chopped
• Liquamen (or salt)
• 50 ml passum (or white wine)
• Olive oil
• Pepper
• Ground coriander seed
• Ground cumin

Instructions:
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Soak the oysters, clams and mussels in cold salted water for a few hours so that they open and purge any sand inside. Replace the water after the first hour to remove any sand. Pour some olive oil in to a large heavy-bottomed saucepan and add the pine nuts, celery, dates. Cook gently without burning. After a few minutes of continual stirring add the rinsed and dried molluscs (in their shells, discarding any which have not opened and which do not close again when you tap then on the table) and the squid. Stir them in and increase the heat. Add the wine and allow this to boil (removing the alcohol) before adding the passum and the rue. Cook over a medium heat until the molluscs steam open (should take about five minutes) then season with pepper and pour into a bowl. Arrange the squid tentacles on top and add some freshly-chopped parsley to garnish.

 

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On Via della Fortuna, a short distance from the House of the Faun heading towards the Porta di Nola gate, we find a house named after the large and evocative fresco on the garden wall depicting a mountain landscape where an ancient hunt for wild beasts is in progress. It is a house of Samnite origin and contains some fine example of fourth style decoration. Personifications of autumn and winter are depicting on the walls of the second cubiculum on the right portray mythological subjects. On the left we can see Leda and the Swan, portrayed amid medallion with the busts of Jupiter and Diana and, on the right, Venus fishing between Mercury and Apollo. In the tablinum w ... continue

(Apic. 9, 11) Ingredients:

• 20 oysters (tinned will do if you can't find fresh)
• 20 venus clams
• 40 mussels
• 8 small squid cleaned and cut into rings (keep the tentacles intact to garnish)
• 100 g roasted pine nuts, roughly chopped
• 2 celery sticks
• Rue, finely chopped
• 10 pitted dates, chopped
• Liquamen (or salt)
• 50 ml passum (or white wine)
• Olive oil
• Pepper
• Ground coriander seed
• Ground cumin

Instructions:
-------------
Soak the oy ... continue

Love was a common topic of conversation in Pompeii. Feelings, passions, poetic love, sex, homosexuality, prostitution and so forth were all part of daily life and not a source of prejudice. The concept of “obscenity” seems to have been unknown. Love and sex were considered earthly practices of a man’s life that were encouraged by the benevolence of Venus. The thousands of examples of graffiti found on the town’s walls are unequivocal proof of what the people of Pompeii thought about love and sex.