The World That Was - Etruscan Mushroom and Barley Stew

Hello and Welcome to The World That Was! 

Today, we're going to look at a recipe from the Etruscans - a pre-Roman civilisation found in Italy in the Bronze Age! This is a simple mushroom and barley soup, which is based on a similar dish from the early Roman republic, recorded by Cato the Elder in his De Agri Cultura from around 160 BC!

In any case, let's take a look at The World That Was. Follow along with my YouTube video above!

Ingredients

1 onion

1 carrot

1 parsnip

1 stick celery

2 garlic cloves

250g Portobello mushrooms (or mushrooms of your choice)

750ml / 3 cups water (or stock)

1 cup barley

olive oil

butter

Method

1 - Cook Mushrooms

Depending on what mushrooms you used, you may have to remove the gills of them, like you can see me doing in the video. Some mushrooms can be eaten with next to no preparation, so check which ones you're using.

Then, toss some butter into a pot, and put it over medium-high heat until it melts. Toss your mushrooms into the pot and sprinkle them with a bit of salt and fresh pepper. Crush a clove of garlic into it and let them cook away for about 5 minutes. They should be done when they're starting to brown. Scoop out your cooked mushrooms into a bowl for later. But leave the butter in the pot.

2 - Chop Onion, Celery, and Garlic

Now we need to prepare our other ingredients.

Start by slicing an onion into thin rings, making sure they're fairly evenly sized. Etruscans probably used wild onions, which would be weaker than modern onions, but a normal onion would work well here.

Chop a stick or two of Celery into small pieces. Celery was common in the Eastern Mediterranean, and likely came to the Italian peninsula around the 6th century BC as a result of Greek colonisation in the South of Italy.

3 - Prepare the Pot

Now go pour some olive oil into your pot. Put all this onto a medium-high heat until the oil starts to shimmer. Toss your onion and celery into the pot at this point, and go mince another clove of garlic onto it as well. Let all this cook for about five more minutes over a medium-high heat, while you chop your other ingredients.

2 - Chop Root Vegetables.

Go peel and chop your parsnips and carrots into rings. Since Roman and Greek writers never distinguished between these two root vegetables, I'm using one of each here. Ancient carrots would have been white or purple - depending on where they were growing - which may have been the source of this confusion. I'm using one of each here, because they go together well in soups.

Toss everything into your pot with the onion and garlic when the onion and celery is starting to go soft around the edges. Cover the pot, and cook it for about 5 more minutes over a medium-high heat.

3 - Add Barley and Mushrooms

After five minutes, go pour about 750ml / three cups of water - or a stock of your choice - into it. I used a vegetable stock here to improve the background taste of this - and a similar stock may have been used in Etruscan kitchens - but water works just as well here, it just results in a slightly thinner final product. 

Put this onto a medium-high heat until it hits a rolling boil. When it hits a boil, turn the heat down to low and let it simmer. At this point, pour your cup of barley into the pot. Let it simmer, uncovered, for about 30 minutes, or until the barley is softened. Add your cooked mushrooms into the pot about 10 minutes before you want to serve it up.

4 - Serve Up

Pour your soup into a bowl of your choice, and garnish with a sprig of parsley or cilantro.

The finished soup is very filling, and has a really nice meaty, earthy taste to it all, thanks to the mushrooms. While a little bland on it's own, we can add spices - such as coriander or cumin - when we're sautéing our onions!

We have next to no direct evidence for Etruscan cuisine, but most of what they ate seems to have been preserved through their assimilation by Rome in the late 6th/early 5th century BC. While mushrooms were eaten by the rich and elite in Rome for much of it's history, it's likely that the Etruscans had a similar attitude towards mushrooms. I chose to use Portobello mushrooms here, because they taste good, but also because they seem to be similar to what ancient Romans used - given contemporary accounts warning people about mushrooms. So obviously don't use that one here.