[Sca-cooks] Ethnic was American Diet was Anchovette

Mon Jul 11 18:49:35 PDT 2005

On Jul 11, 2005, at 9:31 PM, Sue Clemenger wrote:

> There may be more of you, Master A,

I can assure you there's plenty of me. ;-)

> but I, for one, don't know which of the flavors I taste in  
> Worchestershire sauce *IS* tamarind.  I've never had the chance to  
> taste in on its own.

It appears frequently in various SE Asian cuisines. It's a common  
ingredient in sauces for spring rolls in Thai, Vietnamese, and  
Burmese (whatever the adjective form of Myanmar is) cookery, and in  
Indian and Thai sour curries. Kinda hard to describe. Sweet-and-sour,  
a little like sweet tea.

> My one experience with anchovies-as-themselves was on a pizza,  
> hidden under the cheese.  They tasted like nasty little salt bombs  
> to me <<shudder>>.  And I don't live in a part of the US that has  
> the wide variety of ethnic cuisines and markets available  
> elsewhere, so I haven't had the opportunity to taste them prepared  
> on something besides a really bad Domino's pizza.

I think there are variations in quality brought about by a number of  
factors, ranging from age in the storage container, whether they're  
canned or from a glass jar, the storage temperature, the kind of oil  
they were packed in, and how much, if at all, the fishies were cooked  
before you get them. I imagine Dominoes fails on a number of counts,  
probably using huge cans of anchovies that stay open a good while,  
then cooked for longer, at a slightly lower temperature, than on an  
artisanal pizza. These are just guesses, though, but I much prefer my  
anchovies "raw". When cooked, they can acquire an unpleasant, gritty,  
fish-bone taste and texture, and lose a lot of their flavor, aroma,  
and moistness. Salt bombs is about right, but they are, after all,  
fish, and fish is what they should taste like. If they don't,  
something is wrong. But using fresh ones from a chilled jar, packed  
in real olive oil, on a salad of sun-warmed, vine-ripened tomatoes,  
and paper-thin slices of sweet onion? Sublime.

> We're just now getting some places in town that serve more of an  
> artisanal pizza (Going Beyond Pizza Hut <g>), and they serve some  
> tasty things.  I've found that I really enjoy eating ones similar  
> to those that Master A describes......
> --Maire, who drinks her coffee black, hot and a little sweet (for a  
> special treat, I use some of the demerara sugar I brought back from  
> England)
> p.s.  Isn't "balut" a food comprising unhatched ducklings?

That's the one.

A.

>
> Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:
>
>> On Jul 11, 2005, at 1:03 PM, lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:
>>
>>> Adamantius wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> OK, I'm an oddity, and I'd
>>>> rather eat an anchovy at any time of the day or night than have a
>>>> spoonful of molasses (let's not even discuss high-fructose corn
>>>> syrup)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Well, i'm right there next to you about the horror that is high-  
>>> fructose corn sweetener... but i like molasses and anchovies...   
>>> well, not necessarily together, other than in Worcestershire  
>>> Sauce  - which tastes more strongly of tamarind than either  
>>> molasses or  anchovies.
>>>
>> Oh, good. There's one other person on the planet, at least, who  
>> can  find the tamarind flavor. And that person has spent some time  
>> in SE  Asia. I feel a lot better about it now ;-).
>>
>>> Heck, for a brief while i was drinking my very dark coffee with   
>>> whole milk and a heaping spoonful of dark molasses. I liked it.  
>>> But  i'm not really that fond of sweetened coffee in general, so  
>>> after a  while i went back to just coffee and cream (or half-and- 
>>> half or  whole milk)
>>>
>> I think I could detect some sulfurous undertones when I was a kid   
>> (also wasn't a fan of mayonnaise or hardboiled eggs), and reading   
>> Alan King's comments about blackstrap molasses (in which he  
>> asserted  that sugar is processed to remove dirt and other  
>> impurities, and then  what you have left after you remove the  
>> sugar from the stuff is  blackstrap molasses, which suggests that  
>> blackstrap molasses is, in  fact, dirt... okay, it makes perfect  
>> sense when you're eight or nine)  didn't help.
>>
>>>
>>> I just don't understand why people think anchovies are so awful.
>>>
>>> One of my favorite pizza toppings included anchovies, shrimp,  
>>> and  garlic. And i often bring anchovy-stuffed olives to events -  
>>> along  with the garlic-&-jalapeno-stuffed olives which I know  
>>> aren't not  period, but they're a good pick-me-up on a warm  
>>> Saturday afternoon  or during break-down on Sunday afternoon.
>>>
>>> It was great living in southern France, because it was so easy  
>>> to  get all sorts of delicious foods that included anchovies.
>>>
>> I'm a confirmed pissaladiere junkie, myself. For you non- 
>> Provencale- types out there, this is basically a pizza topped with  
>> olive oil,  caramelized onion, garlic, anchovies, black olives and  
>> herbs instead  of the more recognizable cheese-and-tomato stuff. I  
>> never lived in  the South of France, but my first restaurant job,  
>> the one where I May  Conceivably Have Killed Craig Claiborne ;-) ,  
>> was at a Provencale  restaurant in New York...
>>
>>> Then, again, when i was in junior high (1960-62) i used to take   
>>> bags of wheat germ in my lunch and people teased me, but i knew   
>>> they were idiots, so while they were annoying, they didn't hurt  
>>> me.  So i've always been secure in my taste for odd food.
>>>
>> I wish I could remember who it was, but I remember reading an   
>> interview (probably in the NY Times) with some well-known female   
>> chef, who said her parents had both been cooks on some level, and   
>> they used to send her to school somewhere in the American  
>> Heartland  with Westphalian Ham and Brie sandwiches, and the other  
>> kids used to  make fun of her, sitting over their PB&J. In the  
>> interview she  expressed astonishment that anyone could find that  
>> strange in a  planet that also contains balut -- which she then  
>> described in fine  detail. Since then that's been pretty much the  
>> only food that truly  scares me.
>> Adamantius
>>
>
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