Libum: Ancient Roman Cheesecake
For my Roman dish, I decided to make Libum which is described as “ancient roman cheesecake”. Cheesecake is one of my favorite desserts; however, this cheesecake is more like bread with a splash of cheese (ricotta) than our now ‘traditional’ take on cheesecake. Overall, I thought the process of creating the dish was quite simple as you mixed the ingredients to make a soft dough that was then baked. I did, however, go slightly rogue as the amount of flour detailed in the recipe was a slight underestimate of what would be needed. It became a little bit of just doing what feels right, even though my baking experience is vastly limited. I was concerned that adding too much flour may make the final product of the wrong consistency, but I asked one of my roommates for assistance (she is an avid baker) and she confirmed that more flour was indeed needed. Additionally, I was unable to find bay leaves at the grocery stores I stopped at, so I had to omit them from the recipe. Luckily, I do not think either of these self-implemented renditions to the recipe impacted the final taste of the Libum.
Once the Libum had finished backing and the aroma had filled our tiny on campus kitchen, my roommate came back out of her bedroom noting how amazing it smelled. While we both agreed the ancient cheesecakes smelled quite devine, I was hesitant to taste test as the ingredients seemed like an odd pairing. While I love bread and ricotta. Ricotta baked into my bread was something I was unfamiliar with. And after the extra addition of more flour, I was also worried the consistency would be a little messed up. Unfortunately, the final taste was a little bit less of a wow than the aroma, but the consistency of the bread was quite nice (kudos to my roommate). We all agreed that the ancient roman cheesecakes were a little bland and were overpowered by the amount of honey that the recipe called for. If I were going to make this dish again, I think I would serve it with ice cream of some sort, maybe vanilla and then drizzle with caramel.
