[Sca-cooks] Re: Anchovette

[Jessica Tiffin]

bugger, sorry, forgot to change the subject line on my last post.

At 02:52 PM 7/6/05, Adamantius wrote:
>With regard to mold, I'm a little surprised. The stuff is presumably
>quite salty, contains fish or other oils (such as olive) to help
>exclude air, and is reduced to a paste to further exclude air from
>anything but an obviously exposed surface. Is this perhaps some
>evidence to suggest that South Africans refrigerate less of their
>food, overall, than the typical paranoid American?
um.... I dunno... :>.  OK,  having dug out the jar saved from the last one 
... Contains four sorts of fish (including actual anchovies), salt, sugar, 
spices, thickener, some weird stuff with numbers, ascorbic acid, smoke 
essence.  (The cheats).  No added oil, and it's not hugely salty to taste - 
far less so than marmite.  Lid insists that it should be refrigerated after 
opening and used within ten days, so it's not just me being paranoid.  We 
live in a pretty hot climate, we refrigerate most things, promise!

>  Or is it perhaps a
>matter of packaging? I imagine this is packed in a glass or plastic
>jar (or is it in a non-resealable tin?). Most of the anchovy paste
>I've encountered has either been homemade and essentially been potted
>in a glass jar under a little bit of oil, or comes commercially in a
>squeeze-tube, like toothpaste, and as far as I know, either form will
>keep for months if refrigerated, maybe upwards of a year. I must be
>missing something...
It comes in a little jar, with a lid with one of those pop-up safety 
buttons,  like baby food.  (If American baby food does, in fact, have 
pop-up buttons).  I suspect that American versions infuse the hell out of 
it with preservatives, which the South African product doesn't seem to 
do.  (Generally, I'd say we probably don't go for huge amounts of 
preservatives in things). Anchovette certainly goes off remarkably quickly 
even if you do refrigerate it - as I say, grows interesting green mould.

comparative food anthropology, endlessly fascinating!
JdH

Baroness Jehanne de Huguenin (Jessica Tiffin) - cook, herald, musician, etc
Shire of Adamastor, Cape Town, South Africa
melisant at iafrica.com ***  http://users.iafrica.com/m/me/melisant
A wonderful bird is the Pelican, / His beak can hold more than his belly can.
He can hold in his beak enough food for a week,
and I'm damned if I see how the hell he can.  (Spike Milligan)