Exotic luxuries in ancient Rome: ostrich stew

One noteworthy issue when dealing with written historical recipes is: the further you go back in time, the less these recipes represent common people’s everyday food, because usually only extraordinary dishes were deemed worthy to be written down (with some notable exeptions, as usual). The same is true for the ancient Roman cookbook of Apicius. Most dishes were considered a gourmet treat, some of them are outright luxurious. Today I am going to cook one of these exotic luxury dishes: a sweet and sour ostrich stew. Ostriches were known to Romans but their meat certainly wasn’t affordable for average income households. Which is why I am proposing to pair this stew with rice, another highly priced, exotic luxury good of the time. While ostric meat can be found in many regions nowadays, it is by far not commonly available everywhere. Ostrich meat is a lean, red meat and for this recipe can be replaced by beef. You need: ostrich meat (or a suitable replacement), pepper, fresh mint, leeks, celery se