Romans and food – A special evening at the Getty Villa

Culture to taste at the Getty Villa in Malibu: in the occasion of the event At the Roman Table the museum offered a great evening of culture and food to all the lucky guests who had the chance to participate. The event, scheduled for July 14 and 15, was in fact sold-out. In the beautiful location of the Villa, Andrew Dalby, English linguist, translator and historian, offered a lecture entitled Dining with Caesar: Food and Power in Ancient Rome. With a light tone but always very accurate, Dalby focused on the ritual of the banquet as a moment of social relationships through the act of dining, but also as a powerful means to affirm the Roman culture and its domain.

By analyzing ancient paintings Dalby illustrated how place settings and the disposition of food at the table were calculated to impress, persuade, or seduce. The texture of food and its aromas also aimed to enchant and create a sense of sensuality that still remains in the imaginary of ancient Rome. Starting with a general introduction on the territories controlled by the Empire, Dalby moved to explain the connection between their domains and the variety of alimentary products available at the time. By conquering far and different lands Romans also had the chance to discover and import new kinds of food that made their tables "intercultural". Thanks to the extremely efficient web of roads and routes they built, Romans started to import every kind of food also from other continents.

Spices, olives, wine, fish, honey, sugar, citrus, together built up a culinary tradition with a unique identity that still characterizes the Mediterranean area. "Tasting food in Italy was like tasting the entire World", said Dalby. And it's true, the Roman cuisine is probably the first example of internationalization of eating habits. The ceremony of banquet was not the only aspect of the Roman culinary tradition. The ways of cooking and preserving food were in fact very important as well, and the techniques to preserve it were probably improved by the necessity of transporting alimentary products for long distances in the Empire. Romans were able, for instance, to preserve fresh grapes for six months by immerging it in sealed containers of wine. The attention to the quality of food helped the development of new ways of treating it.

Of course, this special attention to food was only possible for the high ranks of the society; lower classes didn't have access to all this variety and as a consequence also the diet and the way to treat food were different. At the same time though, people from lower classes were used as cooks for high society: information we now have access to comes from their commitment and cleverness to mark down their secrets.

The dinner offered by the Getty Villa for the occasion was in fact inspired by the recipes of the slave cook Apicius, collected in a book written 2000 years ago. Served into the beautiful inner Peristyle, the dinner was meant as a moment of social relationship. For this reason guests have been accommodated in round tables for a family style dinner, where they shared the meal while enjoying the relaxing ambience and the soft music of the ancient age.

For this occasion, Sally Grainger developed a four course meal after studying for a long time the role of food in ancient Roman recipes.  Trained as a chef in her native Coventry, England, Grainger developed an interest in the ancient world and got degree in ancient history from the University of London. Guests have been offered kidney, oysters, chicken, bread, zucchini and sea bass fillet, all carefully cooked in different ways and enriched with herbs and spices, as well as with fish sauce, "magic ingredient that enhanced and balanced the flavor". 

In fact, as the chef explained, "the cuisine of Ancient Rome is dominated by two things: the use of complex and unusual spices and a fish sauce that, until recently, was little understood and greatly feared". For this occasion the sauce has been added to a sweet wine in order to create a perfect complement for the oysters. "The balance of the sauterne with the cheesy/meaty fish sauce is quintessentially Roman and should not be missed", said Grainger.

The use of some Indian spices like cumin, coriander, fennel and dill also added an oriental touch to the meal. The dinner concluded with a honey-infused cake and a sesame sweetmeat as dessert. The selection of the courses gave more importance to the delicate and balanced dishes instead of the rich and overstuffed ones, also very popular in the Roman banquets. It aimed to focus on the incredible ability of the cooks of the time and on the great quality of food, that still nowadays makes the Mediterranean cuisine the most varied and complete in the world. The successful event once again confirms the Getty an excellent institution, able to promote the world culture in an engaging way, turning the visitors into a protagonist. More pictures of the event can be found on "L'Italo-Americano" facebook page
www.facebook.com/italoamericanonewspaper.
Photo courtesy of Matthew Parkinson

Alessandra Mastroianni