Here’s the recipe as tweeted:
The sauce: crush celery seed, oregano, mint, ginger, coriander, raisins, honey, vinegar, oil, wine. And…this one is going to take 280.
The rest: In a clay baking dish put down layers of bread, cooked chicken breasts, pine nuts, diced onion, sharp cheese, sauce. Cover & bake.
For 6 boneless (raw) chicken breasts I used:
- 2 tsp celery seeds
- 6 tsp oregano
- 3 TBSP mint (you may prefer less, but I like to go heavy on the mint)
- 2 tsp coriander
- 1-1/2 tsp ginger
- 1 cup raisins
- 4 tsp honey
- 4 tsp vinegar
- 4 tsp white cooking wine
- more white cooking wine, because the bottle was right there
- 2 cups pine nuts (in my opinion, you can’t have too much, for this recipe)
- 3 rolls of bread with sturdy crust (I used par-baked rolls), sliced lengthwise in thirds
- 8 thick slices of sharp cheddar (enough to cover the chicken on each layer)
- 5 chopped shallots
- pepper for garnish, if desired
- surprisingly, no fermented fish sauce
- I forgot the olive oil…probably because it was two in the morning…
Pound together the first six ingredients with the honey, vinegar, and wine. I layered the bread, chicken, sauce, shallots, and pine nuts (two layers fit the pot nicely) and cooked in a lidded Romertopf—soaked in water while I was at work, then placed in a cold oven, temperature set to 450F, and baked for about an hour and a quarter. An hour would probably have been enough, but I’m paranoid about cooking chicken thoroughly. After removing it from the oven, I let it sit in the clay baker for another 15 minutes.
Stray observation: I probably should have saved some of the sauce to pour (before cooking) over the top layer of bread, which came out crusty. Another alternative would be to cube the top layer of bread like stuffing (which is essentially what the other layers become). A variant on the recipe calls for layers of cucumbers as well and chilling the casserole and serving it jellied, which is a very different effect. Also one hard that’s to create if you don’t have snow handy in your ancient kitchen.
And now I’m too sleepy to eat more than a few bites, so I’ll leave you with a picture of the results…
Carolyne Chand 
Can I use oyster sauce instead of fish sauce? Plz suggest…
Hi, Ema.
Two of the reasons for including fish sauce are the salt content and recreating the flavour and aroma of an ancient meal, so that should guide your choice of substitute. Even a little salt is VERY salty to my taste, and I don’t normally eat seafood at all, so Roman-style cooking takes me right out of my comfort zone 🙂
Garum was made from whatever variety of little fish was local, and I’m not familiar with an oyster-based version. But there’s leeway in recreating these ancient recipes: first, you should enjoy the taste of what you’re eating; second, as in any era, cooks adapt to what’s on hand. Using plausible substitutes is still in the spirit of recreating the food of a geographically broad empire. I’m sure if a Roman only had access to oyster sauce, that’s what would be called on in place of garum.
I’ve never tasted oyster sauce (blame my aversion to seafood, but maybe it’s time to try it) so I don’t know how different a flavour it will give compared to a modern fish sauce already being substituted for the ancient brands; or whether oyster sauce will clash with the herb/honey/vinegar palette. I’m told it’s sweeter than fish sauce, so that would change the balance of the sweetness derived from honey and grapes. It might be better for authenticity to leave it out and salt to taste. BUT my ultimate answer is: feel free to experiment and follow your own taste buds.
I am so glad that you provided me with so much of valuable info…I’ll take your idea of including fish sauce in the recipe