[Sca-cooks] Salty fishy liquid ( was Re: Murri )

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jan 19, 2007, at 4:07 PM, Christiane wrote:

> For all those who love that rotted salty fishy stuff, Charles Perry  
> sent me this link:
>
> http://www.tipicalia.com/main/prodotti_tipici/colatura_alici.html
>
> "Colatura di alice" (that last word is pronounced AH-leech in  
> dialect), this page simultaneously claims, is directly descended  
> from Greco-Roman cuisine or the creation of Cistercian monks. It's  
> local to Cetara, a city on the Amalfi coast, where the Byzantines  
> and Muslims occupied various locations at various times. It could  
> be related to the fish murri, but again, it's impossible to tell.

I'd bet money it's more closely related to the Graeco-Roman liquamen  
tradition (which may or may not be argued to be contiguous, if you  
know what I mean), given both the location and the fact that its name  
sounds quite a bit like "halec".

> I'm a bad little Italian. I can't stand sardines and have a low  
> tolerance for anchovies, so the changes of me actually liking this  
> stuff are very, very, low. Ecccccchhhhh!

<shrug> Good little Indians, Chinese, French, Filipino, and lots of  
other people add small amounts of similar products to various dishes  
in place of [some of the] salt, and most of them don't taste  
particularly fishy... just not quite "right" without them.

Adamantius



"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04