SC - Venetian Supremacy

[Richard Kappler II]

Hauviette posted a long and interesting message:
>Garum or liquamen to me is a much more substantial sauce than the fish sauces
>so far mentioned, unless one of them is more substantial than the nuoc mam
>sauce I have seen and tasted. I prefer to use anchovy paste...
(snip)

and she includes a message from Marco Bernini:
>--I am probably going to ignite some controversy here but I do not agree that
>Nuoc mam and garum are the same thing at all.Nuoc mam is basically a fish
>based soy sauce originally made by fermenting anchovies in brine.  Today it
>is often made with concentrated extracts that arethen diluted, the resulting
>sauce is very watery and quite like fishy soy sauce.

Well, i have to disagree with Mr. Bernini's comment. Having lived in 
Southeast Asia and also eaten and cooked a great deal of Southeast 
Asian food in America, Southeast Asian fish sauces are not like 
"fishy soy sauce". They are made by heavily salting small fish, 
letting them stand from some time (i'm not sure for how long), then 
straining the resultant mess, errr, mass. The resultant liquid is 
fish sauce. There's no soy sauce in any i've had. And as far as i 
know, the process producing soy sauce is different from that 
producing fish sauce, although i could be under-informed...

Mr. Bernini describes the process:
>And at least some liquamen/garum recipes seem to indicate a similar
>procedure. Garum or liquamen has many recipes according to who you read,
>it is alternately made from whole fish, fish livers or fish guts and blood
>depending on whoís description you read.  This is then layered alternately
>with lots of salt and herbs of various sorts again depending on whoís recipe
>you use.  The container is then sealed and left to macerate NOT ROT as is
>commonly thought, it is impossible for the contents to rot due to the large
>amount of salt present.
>What happens is that the fish liquefy over time as the coarse salt melts and
>a thick lumpy brine is formed.  This is then strained either finely or
>coarsely depending on the use it is intended for

What i'm not certain of is: how different is the liquid from this 
stuff, finely strained, is from fish sauce? How different is the 
process of producing Southeast Asian fish sauce from that of 
producing liquamen/garum?

I've watched the beginnings of making some shrimp paste in an 
Indonesian village (strictly for local use), and it was basically 
layering tiny shrimp with salt and letting it stand, although i don't 
know if  there was some sort of "starter" (along the lines of mother 
of vinegar, or yeast, or using yogurt to start a new batch) or 
something was introduced later in the process...

as Mr. Bernini continues:
>My reasoning is based on the following:
>I am Roman, I was born in the city am 34 years old and live there today...
(snip)
>The crux of the
>matter is this; if garum was indeed as essential an ingredient in Roman
>cuisine as we are told by ancient texts then it is very likely that it would
>remain in the Roman diet in some prominent form today (much as soy sauce
>and Nuoc mam being very ancient still feature prominently in the far east).
>The fact that Italy has no Nuoc mam type sauce today nor has it had in living
>memory leads me to conclude that garum cannot have been a sauce like nuoc
>mam or it would remain in use today; not just in Italy but in Spain, 
>Greece and
>North Africa,it is simply impossible for such an important ingredient to have
>disappeared from all of these countries without trace.

Well, i don't agree with him here. After reading enough old 
cookbooks, it seems to me that some things have disappeared from 
cuisines, while new things have become popular. I don't think it can 
be assumed that if something was important in the Roman Empire it 
would necessarily survive virtually unchanged for 1500 years. Maybe 
it did, but it seems to me highly likely that time did not stand 
still even in isolated Italian country villages.

However, i like anchovies on my pizza and in my Caesar salad (yeah, i 
know, not Italian). And i have no objection to anchovy paste. So if 
anchovy paste is like liquamen/garum, i can live with that.

So, Master Adamantius, since you've tasted a liquamen made the old 
Roman way, how different is it from fish sauce? How different from 
liquified anchovy paste? Would a blend of the two in any way 
approximate it, or would that be far too different?

(i don't think i'm ready to keep a jar of fish and salt layered in my 
kitchen, although possibly some day...)

Anahita

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