Stuffed Chicken with Table Olives
Submitted by Vivian Efthymiopoulou

[Recipes Index] [World of Chefs]

"Chicken: Stuff the bird with green olives and after sewing it you put it in the casserole. When it's ready you extract the olives and you serve it hot"

Apicius, 6,5,7

This recipe comes from the cook book of Apicius. Apicius is the famous Roman cook who wrote a cook book, De Re Coquinaria, around 400 AD. Of course, dating this book was not something simple. Because although we know that the book we have dates back to 400AD we also know that a mythical gastronome with this name, Apicius, lived in Augustus era, 400 years earlier!! De Re Coquinaria is a book written in simple Latin and obviously it was addressing to professionals although Apicius uses very expensive ingredients! What distinguishes Apicius from other famous cooks is that he exaggerates in the use of spices and herbs! In a typical recipe of Apicius they are listed 10-15 different spices and herbs! Surprisingly in this recipe he doesn't use herbs, maybe because olives have a very strong taste without adding spices. I suggest black pepper because Romans used black pepper. As for the chicken, Homer mentions chickens! The first chickens came in Mediterranean from South China. They were popular decorative motifs on the Ancient Greek vases of the 7th century BC.

Ingredients:

• 170 gr of black olives (Apicius suggests green , but after some experiments I propose you to use the black ones) 
• 2 small chicken, fresh
• 10 grains of black pepper
• 2 laurel leaves
• Salt
• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 1sprig of celery

Preparation:

Chop the olives and fill the belly of the chicken, Sew the belly using cooking cord. Put the chicken in a casserole and cover it with water, add the laurel leaves, salt, pepper and the vegetables. Boil it in low heat for a 1,5 h. Serve it hot or cold.

This is the original recipe. BUT I am Greek, I cannot eat boiled meat!!! I cook it with olive - oil using some garos. What is garos? Long story! It was a very popular sauce, Greeks used in cooking( I won't tell you how they made it!!) You cannot cook an ancient dish without garos, the same way that many Chinese dishes need Soya sauce.

The only parallel I have found after a lot of research is Nouok Mam from Vietnam or Nam Pla from Thailand (Both sold in Athens, thank you very much!) I will be back with garos but I have to work on it a bit. I can need some help if any of you knows something about it!