When the tomb of King Tutankhamun was opened 100 years ago among the golden jewels
there was a stash of food for Tut to munch on in the afterlife.
So using the ingredients he had available in his tomb
I'm making a roast duck with a sauce of figs and dates.
So thank you to Hellofresh for sponsoring this video as we do our best to feed King Tut
this time on Tasting History.
100 years ago in November of 1922
archaeologist Howard Carter under the patronage of George Herbert 5th Earl of Carnarvon
rediscovered the tomb of the New Kingdom Pharaoh Tutankhamun, better known as King Tut.
Five years they had been searching for this tomb and Carnarvon finally told Carter
you know what I'm calling it off but Carter convinced him to give him one more season of funding
because he knew one place in the Valley of the Kings where they hadn't yet searched,
it was the spot where they had been setting up camp for the past five years.
Has anyone searched like exactly where we're standing? Nobody?
Oh this could be really embarrassing...
And just a few days after they began to dig they came across the first step leading down to Tut's tomb.
So Carter called Carnarvon and who was home in England and said get back over here
to Egypt and bring as many of the world's press as possible,
and by late November the world was ready to witness the opening of the tomb.
The thing is Carter didn't actually know if anything was in the tomb because
most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been plundered thousands of years earlier
so it could have very easily been a Geraldo at Al Capone's vault situation.
"Good night, I'm sorry."
But they cleared away the rubble and were able to peer in, Carter with a candle looking into the room
and Carnarvon behind him trying to see. Later on Carter would write
"At first, I could see nothing, the hot air escaping the chamber caused the candle flame to flicker,
but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist,
strange animals, statues and gold- everywhere the glint of gold.
For the moment - in eternity it must have seemed to others standing by -
I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer,
inquired anxiously, 'Can you see anything?' it was all I could do to get out the words,"
'Yes, wonderful things.' "
And there were wonderful things: golden beds, a disassembled chariot,
chests filled with bows and arrows, jewelry, scepters, statues
and boxes filled with items the Pharaoh might need in the afterlife
including a box of fresh underwear because even in the Field of Reeds of Reeds you always want to be prepared.
There was also a sofa in the shape of a speckled cow
beneath which were 48 boxes containing mummified meats including choice cuts of beef from the bone,
gazelle, veal, ducks, geese, pigeon, and other small birds.
The boxes often being shaped like the food within.
The meat had been cooked and then went through a mummification process
similar to the one that the Pharaoh's mommy in the room next door had gone through.
A months-long process of drying with an expensive salt called Natron then wrapped in bandages
and covered in precious resins brought from hundreds of miles away in what is now Syria.
These foods had to keep forever because they were meant for the Pharaoh to enjoy in his afterlife
and it wasn't just meats but other non-mummified foods,
jars that once held honey and wine. The wine jar is being stamped with the location of the vineyard where it was made,
the vintner who made it and the year of the Pharaoh's reign in which the wine was made
very similar to how wine is labeled today. There were over a hundred woven baskets that held the remains of
dates, figs, pomegranates, melons, grapes, green onions, garlic and bread,
and if Tut ever decided to take up baking as a hobby in the afterlife they even left baskets of wheat and barley.
All the necessary ingredients to make an excellent meal
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Now unlike Hellofresh the ancient Egyptians did not leave us any
easy to follow recipe, they really didn't leave us any recipes.
There are depictions of them cooking left on tomb walls but nothing that tells us exactly how they made their food.
So to prepare a meal for King Tut to enjoy in the afterlife I'm going to rely on the ingredients
that would have been available to him in his tomb along with some educated guesswork.
So with that in mind we are going to make a roast duck with fig and date sauce, and for that what you'll need is:
one duck about five pounds or two kilograms, a few stalks of fresh herbs.
I'm using marjoram and dill which were both available in ancient Egypt, five cloves of garlic chopped into large pieces,
some green onion chopped into large pieces, plenty of salt, and about a quarter cup of honey.
For the sauce you'll need one to two tablespoons of olive oil, one cup of minced green onion,
one and a half cups or 350 milliliters of red wine, two tablespoons of red wine vinegar, 15 figs preserved in honey.
You can use fresh figs as well but the ones preserved in honey are fantastic and
you want to cut them into fairly small pieces. You also want to cut up 15 dates,
and they need to be pitted and the ones actually found in King Tut's tomb were pitted for him because
he's a pharaoh, and he doesn't have time to pit his own dates.
So when it comes to actually cooking the duck the ancient Egyptians had a few different methods, most popular were either boiling or roasting over an open fire.
Unfortunately I don't have an open fire here in my kitchen other than the little one on the
stove and I don't think that's going to go very well, so I'm going to roast it in the oven.
So remove the giblets and trim the skin of the neck. Making sure the duck is nice and dry
score the skin of the breast with about three quarters of an inch between each cut.
You're going to do this in a cross hatch or diamond pattern and you want to make sure that they are very shallow cuts.
You're trying to cut the fat but don't want to cut into the meat.
Then cut a few more slits in the under part of the duck wherever it's fatty.
Rub a couple teaspoons of sea salt inside the cavity of the duck and another heaping tablespoon on the outside.
You want to get all over but really focus on the breast making sure that salt gets in those slits.
Then stuff the herbs onions and garlic into the cavity.
This is just for flavoring, you're not actually going to eat the stuffing so just stuff it in there however you want.
Then tuck the extra skin in and truss the legs tying them together with a bit of kitchen twine.
Then if the wing tips are sticking out you want to cut those off or you can just tuck them in under the duck so they don't burn.
Also you want this duck nice and dry if you want a crispy skin.
You can just pat it dry but it's better to leave it in the fridge for 8 to 12 hours
and yes I know the ancient Egyptians didn't have refrigerators but
1) they were in a desert and 2) Tut's duck has been sitting there for three thousand years so
you can bet it's very, very dry.
Now once you're ready to cook the duck line the bottom of a roasting pan with some crumpled up aluminum foil that will catch the fat and keep it from burning.
Then lightly oil the rack and place the duck on it breast side up.
Then set it in the oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit or 220 Celsius, let it cook for 15 minutes
and then lower the temperature to 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 175 Celsius.
Let it cook for another 15 minutes, then take the duck out and flip it over so its back is up
and then return it to the oven for another 15 to 20 minutes.
Then remove it again, flip it breast side up once more, and this time you're going to baste it with the honey.
It also helps if the honey has been slightly warmed, it just makes it easier to baste.
Then you're going to return it to the oven and let it cook for another 10 to 20 minutes, maybe basting it one more time, you don't need to.
The length that it's going to be in the oven at this point really depends on the size of the duck,
your oven and how you like your duck cooked.
You want the breast meat to be around 130 degrees Fahrenheit, 55 Celsius though some people do like it cooked a little bit more.
Now if you look online it will often say that it should be 165 degrees.
False!
That should apply only to the dark meat. The breast meat should be much lower,
if you get it up to 165 degrees it'll be dry and kind of taste like liver.
Now while the duck cooks you can go ahead and prepare your sauce. So heat the olive oil in a saucepan and then add the green onions,
and cook for about five minutes over high heat. Then pour in the wine and bring it to a simmer.
Then lower the heat to medium and let it cook for about five minutes, and then add in the vinegar, salt, dates, and figs.
Then let it cook until it reduces by about half, it should take 10 to 15 minutes.
Now King Tut is perhaps the most famous pharaoh from ancient Egypt but it's not because of of what he did
but rather what was found in his tomb, and what most people know about Tutankhamun
begins and ends with his tomb. So let's take a look not at the death of Tut but at the life of Tut.
Tutankhaten was born around the year 1341 BC during the 18th Dynasty,
and your ears did not deceive you I did say Tutankhaten which likely means 'Living image of Aten.'
Only later would he change his name to Tutankhamun and that was in an effort to rebel against his parents
just like teenagers today and it was probably to rebel against his parents because we don't
100% know who his parents were. Basically everything about Tut's life is up for some debate
but most scholars agree that his father was the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the Heretic Pharaoh.
Now Akhenaten had a very famous Queen Nefertiti though Nefertiti was probably not Tut's Mom,
rather his mother was another queen who is simply known as the 'Younger Lady' might be Nefertiti but probably not.
What is known is that Akhenaten and the 'Younger Lady' were brother and sister.
[Sounds 'Dueling Banjos' as seen in Deliverance]
Now the reason that his father Akhenaten named his son Tutankhaten was because
Akhenaten was the pharaoh that turned Egypt away from polytheism to focus more on one god, Aten.
Aten was not the sun god but he is represented by the disc of the sun,
and in the promotion of Aten the worshiping of all other gods was forbidden,
their temples being abandoned and their priests being put out of their jobs,
but it didn't seem that anyone was really a fan of
this new religion except for Akhenaten but he was pharaoh so everybody kind of had to follow along.
Spoiler alert!
Akhenaten died and everyone was like well let's not do that anymore, and so
his son decided to change his name to Tutankhamun or 'Living image of Amun',
Amun being one of the supreme gods and a lot more popular than Aten.
Now after Akhenaten died there may have been one or two short-lived pharaohs, probably older relatives
before Tutankhamun came to the throne in his own right
and to make it more confusing he did so under yet another name which honored the Sun God Ra.
The boy had a lot of names which is why it's just easier to call him King Tut.
He also took a queen named Ankhesenanum. Same name as the lady from The Mummy but not the same lady.
Now Ankhesenanum was the daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti making her his half-sister,
very Targaryen.
Now in addition to the new queen and a name change Tut also decided to roll back all of the reforms that his father had put in place.
He moved the capital back to Thebes and brought back the old religion
which included enriching the priestly orders and restoring old monuments and temples,
but it's not very likely that he was doing this alone seeing as when he came to the throne he was eight.
The one likely at the helm was one of his most powerful viziers a man named Ay.
Now other than the dismantling of everything that his father did and returning to the old religion
there's not a lot no known about Tutankhamun's reign. His reign only lasted for nine years before he died still a teenager,
and there are romantic stories about him being murdered and lots of palace intrigue but in reality
it was probably a much more mundane death stemming from a whole host of physical ailments
because everybody was related to everybody else. Generations of swimming in a rather shallow gene pool
left Tut with a clubbed foot, necrotic bones, and severe scoliosis.
He walked with a cane, several of which were found in his tomb, and he may have had to have been strapped to his chariot.
He was also sickly and had multiple strains of malaria.
The kid made the Habsburg look well bred.
So while we don't know exactly what killed him there is no lack of contenders and
the reason that we don't know how he died or that much about his parentage or his reign is because
after he was gone there was an effort to wipe him away from the history books.
See after he died Ay who was the power behind the throne became pharaoh himself but after he died
Horemheb became Pharaoh. Horemheb had been a general under Tut and Ay and I'm guessing he didn't really like his bosses
because when they died and he became pharaoh he made an effort to wipe everything that had to do with them
and more importantly with Tut's father Akhenaten out of the history books.
The goal was to pretend that the Amarna period, that time of worshiping Aten and the years following had never even happened.
And he did a very good job. While their names were not completely forgotten
most of Tut's reign was lost to history
and we would know even less had his tomb been subject to the same ravages and robberies that many of the tombs of more famous pharaohs had in the past.
Now Tut's tomb was robbed at least twice in antiquity but they were very, very soon after he was entombed,
and it doesn't seem that they really got past that first room.
And as his name was wiped from history so was his tomb because not long after it was built another tomb was built nearby,
and the debris from its construction buried the entrance to Tut's tomb. Even workers houses were built over the entrance
and so it disappeared for millennia. It wasn't until 1922 only a decade after another Egyptologist said,
"I fear the Valley of the Tombs is exhausted."
that Howard Carter peered into the tomb and saw wonderful things like this roast duck with fig and date sauce,
or at least the ingredients to make it. So once the sauce has thickened a bit take it off the heat
it'll continue to thicken as it cools but it's not going to get as thick as something that has been thickened with cornstarch.
So if you want it that thick add cornstarch.
As for the duck once it's ready let it sit for 10 minutes and then go ahead and serve,
and here we are roast duck with a fig and date sauce as might have been eaten by King Tutankhamun,
and here we go.
Hmm.
m!
That's fantastic.
So I love duck, not everybody does but I really love duck
even when it's a little more cooked than I typically like sometimes. Timing things
is very hard and it will go from medium rare to a little more well done- it's not well
done but a little more well done very, very quickly because it will keep cooking even after you take it out of the oven,
but it's not dry. It's more done than I like but it's not dry yet.
Flavor is just fantastic. What's really lovely is is that sauce. It kind of reminds me of cranberry sauce
in that it's smooth and yet it has like pieces of the fruit in there.
The wine- there is no alcohol flavor to this at all.
It's kind of all cooked off so you're just getting the rich flavor of it
without any burn from any alcohol at all. You wouldn't even know that wine was actually the main ingredient here.
I do think as it gets colder just like cranberry sauce, as it gets colder it's
going to start to firm up even more and more, and maybe that's a good thing.
I think this could be eaten cold, it doesn't need to be eaten hot. In fact they probably would have eaten it cold.
Now for those of you who have stuck around here to the end I'm going to share with you a picture of when
I played Lord Carnarvon in a play back in my 20s about King Tut when I first moved to New York. So
everyone should make this because I think everyone would- even if you don't like duck make the sauce.
Put it on a different bird or something else because the sauce is just wonderful.
It's sweet yet it's more complex than a cranberry sauce, and it's not as sweet as a cranberry sauce because
it's not filled with sugar and the fruits are different than something that we're used to.
It's actually perfect for Thanksgiving or Christmas which are coming up.
Anyway I'm going to finish this. I'm probably going to move on to a leg,
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
*Chomp*