SC - Re: Apicius site, some thoughts
Lilinah biti-Anat
lilinah at grin.net
Tue Nov 16 18:52:37 PST 1999
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based soy sauce originally made by fermenting anchovies in brine.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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