box lunches for legionairies

[richsc]

We're looking into a different catering for Roman Days, but want to keep the cost down for the participants. Has anyone tried Roman style recipes for this sort of serving?

[Chuck Russell]

Legio McDs

[Carlton Bach]

I'm not sure you can do box lunches, but low-cost Roman fare is perfectly possible. I catered a Roman wedding once that hads a limited budget, and I could have gone much cheaper. What do you have on site?

I would suggest looking at wheat bread as your main filler, homemade if you have more time than money, purchased in otherwise. Flatbreads do fine for 'Roman', though if you can get them, round wholemeal wheat loaves are more authentic.

For a second and third 'filler' dish, go with lentil stew and savory wheat porridge. There are several recipes for the first, with exotic ingredients adding to the rather bland flavour, and the latter is easily made interesting by adding herbs and maybe chunks of meat and/or cheese (will you have vegetarian/vegan/allergic concerns?)

For a cheap meat dish, you can go with isicia, sort of a meat loaf (we don't know how big or small they were, so both making a large one and serving it sliced or making little ones like Oxford sausages will do).

Will you have prep time? There are sausage recipes, most particularly the Lucanian ones, that keep well when smoked and are quite tasty.

If the money holds out, why not go with roasted pork chops brushed with strong brine on the grill? It's technically a late recipe (from Anthimus), but it's very good and not overly expensive to make, and you can serve a heavenly white vinegar-honey sauce with it).

By way of veggies, cuke salad with vinegar-wine dressing, melons with honey-vinegar dressing, beets and/or beet greens in mustard dressing, and boiled carrots with vinegar and garum have all worked for me at very reasonable cost. A little more upscale, you could opt for chanterelle mushrooms or asparagus. And of course, olives are always fine.

Dessertwise (if you need dessert) you could go with a sweetened semolina pudding or just serve honey yoghurt (again Anthimus - Apicius recommends olive oil instead of honey). Fresh fruit always goes down well, but may turn out costly.

If you need any of the recipes, let me know. I hope this is what you had in mind - the ancients' idea of a 'box lunch' was a bit of hardtack and a swig of posca, I'm afraid.