Do youever wonder how styles of eating became what they are?

What's the history of food?

I thought it might be fun to explore some of the history that makes the Mediterranean diet, the Mediterranean diet.

We'll head to the ancient ruins of Pompeii for some answers today on Christina Cooks, The Macroterranean way.

Underwriting for Christina Cooks is provided by Suzanne's Specialties, offering a full line of alternative vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne's Specialties, sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

Jonathan's Spoons, individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding is also provided by.

Hi, I'm Christina Pirello and this is Christina Cooks, where each week we take fresh seasonal ingredients and whip them into amazing dishes.

Will it all be plant based?

Yes.

Will it all be delicious?

Si, si, si.

So when I was growing up, we had a lot of traditions around food in our family.

No meat on Friday, you know, either fish or lentils.

And I remember my mother and grandmother making lentil soup and me running out of the room screaming as though I was being murdered because I hated beans.

I hated most things.

I was not a great eater.

If my mother was alive today, she'd go, Really?

Really.

You're obsessed with lentils.

Do people know you?

So we're going to make a lentil soup that has brown rice in it and is kind of a little bit of an ancient style recipe because today, what a treat.

We're going back to Pompeii to talk about ancient foods.

But first, let's make ancient style food.

So we're going to take olive oil, which is one of the most ancient foods out there.

And very good for your heart health as long as you're using authentic olive oil, meaning it's real olive oil from a farm that grows olives.

And none of that that you bought in a big box store for $2.

Real olive oil tastes like.

What's the word I'm thinking of?

Olives.

So it's a little bit of an investment, but you got to do it.

So we're covering two whole cloves of garlic.

It's very typical in Italian cooking to not chop the garlic into little tiny pieces so that it overwhelms the dish.

They use the whole garlic and either take it out or let it become part of the dish.

I tend to like it as part of the dish.

So on top of the garlic, we'll go some red onions, diced.

You can use whatever onions you like.

I'm a red onion girl.

I love them.

Then we're going to add a little chili flake.

Because with a bean soup, what you want to do is create some spicy flavor to lift your energy up because protein tends to be heavy and we want to bring your energy back up.

Even though soup is meant to relax your digestive tract and soups and stews were very popular in ancient Rome, which we know because of Pompeii.

Pompeii gave us all this insight into ancient Rome because while they were destroyed literally by a volcano, underneath all that ash and pyroclastic flow was a perfectly preserved city.

So we saw that they had more than 300 restaurants called hot tables, and the hot tables served soups and stews, mostly made from whole grains and beans because poor people had no kitchens, so they had to eat out.

So they'd eat these stews with bread and wine and the little restaurants or hot tables had rooms in the back where you could take a nap.

It's amazing, amazing, amazing culture.

So once your onions are shining with oil, we're going to add to it some crushed tomatoes.

This is a really simple soup.

There's not much in it.

Onions, garlic, crushed tomatoes.

Then we'll add some brown rice, about a half cup, and then about a cup of lentils.

You can use green or brown.

The thing you don't want to do is use baby lentils.

They just they're not going to get creamy enough to make them into a great soup.

And then we'll add water to generously cover the ingredients.

And when you add water to only generously cover, you'll need to add more water as the beans soak it up and the rice soaks it up.

But by not adding all your water at once, what you get is a sweeter, richer flavor on your soup.

So this soup's going to come to the boil and cook for about 45 minutes to an hour, as long as it takes to cook the rice, not the lentils, the rice.

And then we'll come back and we'll season it when it's done.

So after 45 minutes to an hour, you'll know...you'll have this texture.

You see how creamy this is and the rice is soft and the lentils are soft.

This is like an entire meal in a bowl.

So you want to take it down to a simmer because now we're going to season it with miso.

Now I know miso is not an ancient food from Pompeii, but miso is going to give us a cheesy sort of finish, which is very popular in soups.

So we're going to take miso and dissolve it in hot broth.

And this is just so that we get a nice mouthfeel, do you know what I mean?

You don't want to bite down on the lumpy batch of miso, but you don't want to boil the miso either.

So you going to turn your heat down because you want this to aid in the digestion of the soup.

So the miso is going to get stirred in, give it a quick stir like that.

And now the finishing touch to this soup is escarole This is escarole.

You can also use chicory, which is more of an ancient green, but a lot harder to find.

So we're going to use escarole finely chopped and we're going to stir it right into the soup because it's a little bit bitter to use it like as a garnish doesn't really work that well.

So we're just going to stir it until it wilts just a little bit.

And then you can garnish the soup again with parsley or basil.

But I tend to just let the chicory be the freshness that got stirred in or the escarole, whichever it is.

And once it's just like this, you can see this is almost like a stew.

Then we make a hearty bowl and this dish, this main course soup or stew, is going to fuel you all day.

And speaking of fuel, let's head to Pompeii and talk to Antonio Muska more about the wonderfulness that was Pompeii.

(Speaking Italian) I'm so happy to be here.

So happy to have you here.

And so are we going to the ruins?

Of course.

To talk about food?

(Speaking Italian) So I'm here at a tomb ruins on the property of Bosco de Medici on the road to Pompeii with Antonio Mosca.

So there's our shadow over everything, Vesuvius.

Yeah, [Inaudible].

And we know it was 79 A.D., but Antonio, like life was going on normally.

Didn't they see it coming?

I would say not really.

I mean even if for sure there were some warnings by the nature the people living in the area had really lost the memory of mountain as a volcano, because we know that the previous eruption happened centuries before us.

So they couldn't imagine that something goes so tragically what's going to happen.

So they weren't paying attention at all?

I would say not.

I would say not.

This is what we know.

This is what we know also, thanks to some fine things we found.

I mean, once in a restaurant, we found some coins hidden by some people in the food.

They're going on.

Imagine that.

They may have thought they were coming back.

Possibly, yes.

Otherwise they would take the money with them.

How many hours did this go on?

Well, we know it lasted three days.

Three days.

Some geologists to some volcanologists.

But imagine that the first part of the eruption was not thrilling.

Sure can be.

Imagine, you know, the pumice.

Yeah, some bodies are visible down there, basically.

Down here, also.

Yeah.

So basically so light stones carried by the wind after eruption happened and possibly for about 20 hours.

So imagine a sort of a sort of course the rain.

We just had this...

Almost like hail, but but right?

Pieces.

Yeah, small pieces, most stones, embedded ice.

So for the first part of the eruption, if they wanted, possibly they could run away.

After a while, not anymore.

Because, you know, we have one meter, two, three, four, feet, five feet of debris.

After a while, the people prefer staying inside.

They've been trapped inside.

Wow.

And then later the worst happened because later the ashes are right then that's the most terrible part of the eruption.

Wow.

Antonio, Pompeii was a small town or a big bustling city?

Pompeii was a trading city, was a commercial town.

Pompeii was closer at the time than today to the river.

And the river was a sailable river.

Yeah.

So the river connected Pompeii with inland with some of the towns in the land that we do see.

Right, and with the Mediterranean Sea.

So it was a busy town.

With that we are pretty sure probably about 30,000 people living before then.

The earthquake of 62 happened.

Okay.

So a town literally, I would say packed.

Tell me about the food that they ate because the food they ate is very similar to the food that I eat now.

Basically, we are in in the sense in this property in the countryside of Pompeii, there was a massive production of onions, cauliflowers, so plenty of vegetables.

So we counted plenty of farms.

[Ineligible] villa rustica.

The villa rustica was a villa with a residential area, but most of the villa was organized to be like a farm, to make olive oil, to make wine.

The wine from here was exported all around.

It was a popular wine.

It was probably not the best wine or earn award best, but there was a massive production of wine so easily in a tavern in a little poppina.

This is the name, in a little calpona, calpona, probably from calpona the rives something you'll love.

(Speaking Italian) [Inaudible] is one of the theories, probably the word [inaudible] comes from that.

Who knows?

But anyway you could have a, you know, a soup, a piece of bread, a glass of wine.

[inaudible] So did all the houses have kitchens?

So like or did everyone eat out because... Well, I would say both.

So in the rich houses we find that they had kitchens.

Imagine a counter with a little space to feed to to just [inaudible] next to the kitchen, often something with water or something to clean something sometimes [inaudible].

So toilets next in the kitchen and going on.

Poor house is not really.

I mean poor house it means sometimes it means sometimes a room, two rooms..Right..

with more than one man inside.

So in their case they ate something...just grab something on the street or otherwise.

Something raw.

Something [inaudible] going on.

That's something else.

Because we always mention again, I told you something before about the bread for sure was the most common food.

Some soup, the [inaudible] was the most common soup for plenty of people.

Something with farra and that's all.

Of course, don't forget that at the time they didn't eat so much olive oil.

Why?

Because formerly olive oil was mostly used for lamps.

For a lamps.

No.

Other light in the house, for example, in the streets in the night.

Or otherwise to make perfume.

I would rather Eat in the dark.

Yeah.

Otherwise too, too for perfumes.

Because, you know, olive oils, olive oil was also used to make the perfume spice.

So they mostly cooked, for example, we some we learned frying food.

We learned, yeah, it was not really a light [inaudible].

So the food wasn't always healthy, but when it was, it was pretty good.

Yes.

Basically, yes.

We can we couldn't imagine that.

We can imagine that.

They would say it's plenty of meat, fish, always up to the different social conditions of people.

Right.

But, I think that they used to bring up animals here in the area.

They used to bring up their mouses, strange animals they used to eat rooster, chickens, eggs, basically on the other side of the bay, they would, they used to bring up oysters.

So, in that case was something pretty fancy as it was most of the time.

But they used to do that.

For most of the people, just the soup and seeds and, some vegetable, some bread that's the idea.

And they were probably healthier than the people eating the oysters.

Possibly yes.

They had fruit?

They had like figs and dates and things like that as well because they didn't really use sugar.

Right?

They used fruits.

Exactly, normally most of the sugar they ate as a food was from honey.

Right.

They had honey.

Because I was reading an article that said one of the things they discovered in Pompeii was their teeth was very good.

They had very good teeth because they had no added sugar.

Right.

So basically no artificial sugar.

So teeth were pretty good, especially if there were there were not other problems going on.

Right.

But yes, honey was used.

The tomb sometimes they offer to the they put some money in the boats, in the tombs and going on.

[Inaudible] So, what did they think this was?

A house with its tomb?

Is this the same guy's house?

Was a tomb, was a tomb.

But we are outside from the walls of the town.

Oh, that's right.

[Inaudible] Another graveyard, cemetery...We're outside from the from the from the walls.

Is also partially visible, a street because there was a road around the wall of Pompeii.

So imagine a sort of circle along the wall connected with some of the streets going, leading to some other towns.

Amazing.

Okay.

It is amazing.

So at the time, working outside from the town was like working in a cemetery, basically, because there were tombs along the streets.

Along the streets.

And that's interesting also because you can also see some volcanic materials in the spots.

You see the gray one that [inaudible].

That's [inaudible] are right there, by the eruption once the volcano erupted.

That eruption from that mountain there.

Yeah, from the mountain just behind us.

Vesuvius.

That reminds us.

Antonio, I learn so much from you every time I'm with you.

(Speaking Italian) (Speaking Italian) Thank you.

Thank you to you, too.

That's Pompeii.

So this is a lovely whole grain and it's a beautiful color and I use it to make tobouleh which is not an Italian dish, but also in tobouleh, we use bulgar which I don't care for, so I either make it with quinoa or millet.

So you're going to take the millet, wash it really well and then it gets cooked 2 to 1 until it has this lovely fluffy texture, which is really gorgeous in color and even nicer in texture.

So we're going to mix into this some finely diced onion just like you would make tobouleh, finely diced red onion, some pine nuts, once again, pine nuts.

Then we're going to take some lemon juice, fresh lemon juice, squeeze it through your fingers.

This all is once you get done with the millet, it's the same ingredients as you would use to make tobouleh.

A little more lemon juice.

I like a lot of lemon when I make tobouleh, so I'm using the juice of a whole lemon.

Squeeze through your hands.

You can use a gadget if you want to, but it's just something else to wash, so I generally don't.

Then we're going to take some cherry tomatoes and quarter them.

You don't want to cut things too finely except for the onion, because onion can be very sort of peppery and too spicy for people.

And if raw onion is not your thing, it doesn't work for you, then bring a pot of water to the boil, a small pot of water, blanch your onion really quickly and use it that way.

It becomes a little bit sweeter and you still keep the crunch.

So you want to do that.

But I tend to use it raw because millet is very mild mannered in its flavor.

So the onion kind of gives you a really nice sort of bite to this.

Then some extra virgin olive oil, not too much, maybe a tablespoon or two, just to give it some richness.

If you put too much oil, it'll get sort of smashed and mushy and not so nice.

Then you take a lot of mint and parsley, take off the stems, and then we're going to coarsely chop this because if you know tobouleh, which I'm sure most of you do or you've had it or you've tried it, it's more fresh herbs than anything else.

Ooh, smell that mint, it's so good, so good.

And if mint's not in season, you know, then just use parsley.

But if you can do this when mint's in season or basil, ah..lovely, lovely dish.

And you just keep running your knife over all these fresh herbs, inhaling the perfume and thinking it's heaven.

If you love to cook, this is heaven for you.

Then take your herbs, mix them in, and just go in and fold.

Now you've salted very likely, I hope, salted your grain when you cooked it.

So you really don't want to salt it now.

You want to salt your grain when it comes to the boil, rather than add sort of raw salt to this.

Although you do have lemon juice, it would probably make it a little digestible, but you really don't want to use too much raw salt.

So, I tend to not salt the tabouleh after I have salted the grain.

You could also add olives to this if you want to up your sort of salty flavor.

Once it's mixed, right into a serving bowl.

This dish is so pretty and fresh looking that it's really hard to beat and it's a great way to get the people that you love to eat a whole grain.

And the fact that it's ancient, why not?

We get a lot of emails in our office and a lot of texts and a lot of messages and a lot of them are very interesting topics like this one.

Do I think that ancient people ate better than we do in modern times and the answer is yeah.

So in ancient times they ate things like millet and whole grains and beans, and one of the reasons they did that is because they were poor.

So if you look at cities like Pompeii, they had things called Publicada, which means hot table because the poor didn't have kitchens in their homes.

So they would go to these restaurants, as they called them, and eat unleavened bread and these stews made from whole grains, beans and vegetables so that they could work long days and still be well nourished.

So I would say, to sum it up, we eat a lot more processed food than they do.

They ate things that were from nature, from the earth, cooked well and as a result enjoyed better health.

So when I was a kid, my grandparents would like try to make combinations of foods that I would actually eat.

And this dish that I'm about to make, I've been eating since I was a child because they knew that I would eat potatoes, anything to do with artichokes, olives, and garlic.

So they used to put them all together, roasted, so that they knew that I would actually eat something at the table.

So what I have is red skin potatoes.

I like them because they're small and they're not super waxy, and I really like that.

But you can use whatever potatoes you like, some artichoke hearts.

You can use the frozen or the jarred.

If you use the canned ones--not the jarred ones--the canned ones, please rinse them because that brine can taste a little acidic.

Black olives, whole cloves of garlic because you're going to roast and get really sweet.

And I used to pick them out of this dish and put them on bread.

Olive oil, generously.

This is going in the oven.

Then you want to add a little salt, but don't get crazy because you have olives in here.

And while olives are rich in pantothenic acids...say that three times fast...pantothenic acid, which the ancient Romans believed helped us to live forever, it's also salt.

So be a little careful with that and a little bit of black pepper.

Okay.

You give this a quick toss to make sure everything's coated.

Try not to sneeze from your black pepper.

This goes into a roasting dish, right?

Preheat oven to 375.

Put all your veggies in a way that there's not a lot of overlap so that they cook evenly.

And then the last thing to add to this are a couple of sprigs of fresh thyme.

Now, my grandmother was not big on using a ton of herbs and different combinations.

She used one herb per dish, so this one she used to use thyme.

You could also use basil, but she was big on thyme, so we'll use thyme.

So this is going to go into the oven uncovered for about 45 minutes with the occasional stir, so everything evenly browns.

It's going to be yummy.

And after 45 minutes, you have this gorgeous dish.

We're going to remove the thyme.

Just little..it kind of breaks up and becomes little sticks.

So you just remove what you can find, right?

Just get it out of there as much as you can and then we're just going to serve this.

You could take this right to the table.

It wouldn't matter.

But I'm kind of really big on serving into dishes.

I mean, look at that garlic.

Just look at that.

You just want to grab that and smear it on a piece of bread.

So all together we've used so many foods from my family's sort of history book.

So look back at your heritage.

Look back at your family.

Maybe not everybody's Italian, sadly, but look back at your heritage and look at the dishes that you love the best and see if you can't find a way to either make them healthy, remake them with a modern twist, or make them in a way that you love.

So what are you waiting for?

Let's get back to the cutting board and I'll see you next time on Christina Cooks, the Macroterranean Way.

Underwriting for Christina Cooks is provided by Suzanne's Specialties, offering a full line of alternative, vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne's Specialties, sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

Jonathan's Spoons, individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding is also provided by.

You can find today's recipes and learn more by visiting our website at Christina Cooks.com and by following Christina on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

The companion cookbook, The Macroterranean Way, Volume Two combines the Mediterranean diet with the ancient wisdom of Chinese medicine, allowing us to understand how food affects us, so we can cook deliciously while creating the wellness we want.

To order your copy for $19.95 plus handling, call 800-266-5815.

Add Back to the Cutting Board and Christina's Iconic Glow, a prescription for radiant health and beauty and get all three books for $49.95, plus handling.

Call 800-266-5815.