SC - Grapes & Yeast

[ChannonM@aol.com]

Lilinah biti-Anat wrote:
> 
> 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...

The process is different, to say the least. Soybeans are boiled,
drained, mashed and formed into cakes, which are then left in a dark
place to grow a particular mold (as you mention in another context, a
starter may be added) in a process pretty similar to that used for
making sake. The mold-converted cakes are then steeped several times to
produce different grades of soy sauce, and some people eat the leftover
cakes, which are believed to be the cause of the extremely high rate of
stomach cancer in populations where soy sauce is made locally. Never
mind that so many Asians, even now, are chain smokers. But this is also,
I believe, the source of Charles Perry's theory that murri may be a
carcinogen, or contain carcinogens, because soy sauce is far, far more
like murri than like Asian fish sauce. 

> 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.

So, any claims anybody may make about garum are bound to be mostly
inaccurate because they won't apply across the board, while any
statements that _I_ may make, on the other hand, are accurate because of
common factors like salt...according to whose recipe you use? I don't
mean to wrong the man, but this seems a little too pat.

> >  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.

And this is due not to the salt, either, but to the presence of enzymes
in great amounts in the fish entrails, and to a lesser extent in the
muscle itself (Some Philipino versions of bagoong, I think it's called,
are made with gutted fish: they'd likely be the source of the idea that
these sauces are supposed to be sour as well as salty and fishy).
 
> 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?

According to some authorities, not much, provided there's enough salt to
prevent lactic fermentation, which does occur in some Asian fish sauces,
but not in all.
 
> 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...

No starter, AFAIK. I've seen this shrimp paste in jars in my
neighborhood, in several forms, some made from dried shrimp, producing a
mysterious purplish paste, others grey or nearly white, depending on
differences in the process according to different regional traditions.

> 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.

Ya think? ;  )  As I said, the toga, real Latin, and a dislike for
Certain North African Empires comes to mind as social factors that have
simply become extinct. I'm sure there are other culinary examples that
come to mind: certain of the wine preparations, for example, the habit
of boiling and pureeing vegetables only to thicken them again into
custards, probably the extensive use of pennyroyal. I'm sure there are others.
 
> However, i like anchovies on my pizza and in my Caesar salad (yeah, i
> know, not Italian).

Mexican of Italian descent, however.

> 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?

Real garum seems to taste pretty close to anchovy paste, but the color
and texture aren't even close, and the aroma of either is actually
rather mild compared to what you might expect. I guess it would depend
on your use. What I tasted was a clear yellowish-to-amber liquid, with a
body or "mouth feel" like ale; it's as if it had a high enough specific
gravity you could taste it -- it's a bit heavier than the SE Asian fish
sauces I'm familiar with. A slight oiliness, but not much -- I assume
this is natural fish oil. Garum was always thought to be an extremely
healthy food product, provided you're not a tunny or a mackerel... . It
definitely tasted of anchovies, and then so did the nam pla that was
placed alongside it for comparison, but they weren't the same. I think
perhaps the trace of oil was missing from the nam pla. Maybe if one were
to blenderize a can of anchovies in oil in nam pla or another
non-vinegar-based fish sauce, then let the solids settle out, that'd be
a closer approximation. I'm also a bit surprised that some of the
"quick" boiled versions haven't been experimented with more. I think
it's what Flower and Rosenbaum used for their various trials of Roman
recipes. 
 
> (i don't think i'm ready to keep a jar of fish and salt layered in my
> kitchen, although possibly some day...)

No, silly, you keep it in a sunny part of the back yard!

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================