SC - fish (OP)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> 
> Jadwiga Zajaczkowa commented:
> > I have. But it was fish, and it was in the US. Little crisp salted whole
> > fish, fried. The concept sounded good, but they didn't get eaten, even by
> > me, and I TRY everything.

So if you tried it and didn't like it, what was wrong with it? I'm
curious because it had always been my impression that a general fish
avoidance was largely a geographical issue. I'm not talking about people
who would rather have steak most of the time, I'm talking about people
who are pathologically incapable of being in a room with a fish dish
without saying something nasty about it. The SCA seems to have a lot of
these, but groups that are located near the ocean or other viable bodies
of water seem to have less of this attitude.
 
> Anyway, today I decided to try their "fish cooked in a clay pot". When
> I ordered it the waiter asked if I liked fish sauce. I said I hadn't
> ever had it before and he insisted that he bring some out for me to
> try. He did, and I found it to be oily, quite fishy and quite salty.
> I had heard about this product from this list. I said to go with it.
> 
> The food came out in a very hot, small clay pot with chunks of lightly
> fried fish in a sauce of fish sauce and a few other seasonings and such.
> There were three mounds of rice to eat it on. It was wonderful! The fish
> was very tender.
> 
> Hmm. I wonder if there is anything like this in period cuisine?

In period, probably. If documentably so, I'm not sure, but it seems
fairly likely that if the cuisines of the Mediterranean coastline were
fairly rife with garum/liquamen/halec use up until the Middle Ages, and
then again in the seventeenth through twentieth centuries (mostly in the
form of salt-cured anchovies and pissalat), it would suggest at least
the likelihood that such products were used in the Middle Ages.  
 
> Thanks, folks. Before hearing the descriptions and comments on 'fish
> sauce' here, I doubt I would have considered this dish. I also have a
> bottle or two of fish sauce here at home that I bought when exploring
> some of the Asian groceries here in town. Again, because of comments on
> this list. But I hadn't opened the bottles yet. I did open one of them
> tonight when I added some to the leftover rice and sauce I brought
> home from the restuarant.

What kind of fish sauce did you buy? Nam pla, nuoc mam, patis, what? I
think nuoc mam is the mildest, and I've found that patis is about the
closest to the garum I tasted at the A&S event we did a while back, but
it is quite... aromatic, when heated You might want to cook with it when
your lady wife is out ;  ) . When I used patis in an Anthimus recipe
workshop, I turned my back for a minute and some bounder let off some
kind of fish-packed stink bomb on site. It was enough to put one off
one's patis.  
> 
> They also have a whole, fried fish that got great reviews in the
> newspaper review I saw of the place. But that is more expensive and
> wasn't on the lunch menu, so I've been saving that for a special
> time.

Kewl! A fresh fish is a thing of beauty, and it's always fun to see what
was available, in season, and fresh when the restaurant people dealt
with the vendors. One of my favorite experiences along this line was
when the owner of a Chinese restaurant that we frequent sidled up to us
(I think he has a bit of a crush on my mother-in-law, who was with us)
and confided that he had a special fish that he had gotten in for a
banquet, but that he had an extra one, swimming in a tank in the
basement. After much discussion in mixed Toysan and Cantonese, and after
everybody decided they had no idea what this fish was called in English,
we ordered it anyway, and when it came out in its coating of ginger,
scallions, light soy sauce and boiled peanut oil, I was able to point to
it and tell the owner, with a huge grin, "Small... mouth... bass!" I've
had smallmouth that fresh before, but none that I didn't have to catch
myself, and none so perfectly cooked.  

On the little fried fish theme, these are a mainstay all over Asia, it
seems. You can get them in cans, even, in a variety of species and
preparations, fried almost to a jerky consistency, with the fins, bones,
etc., almost disintegrated. They do lose some crunch in the canning
process, but not as much as you'd think. A common serving method is to
steam them over a pot of rice; my favorite are the little fried dace
with salted black beans, but there are plain fried fish available too. I
was thinking they might make an interesting ingredient in that
Provencale/Icelandic fish sauce in one of the Harpestrang variants.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com