Thread by @SoundThom, THREAD: "A little garos in your food Sir?" We could imagine an [...]

THREAD:
"A little garos in your food Sir?"
We could imagine an ancient cook-slave asking his master the above question during one long-drawn symposium in ancient Athens, couldn't we?
Let's explore the history of this ancient Greek and Roman ingredient shall we?
1/n

So, what exactly IS garum? I've read somewhere been described as "The funky fish guts were the ketchup of the Ancient World" which is not too far from the truth! Garum was the ubiquitous table sauce, the go to flavouring agent, of the ancient world.

Cooks used in foods, gourmet guests used it at the table. Apparently the first recorded fish sauce was produced by the ancient Greeks of the Black Sea colonies. Clearly the abundant fish resources of the Black Sea played a role in the production of this popular condiment.

The sauce we know from Martial's verse - "here is lordly garum, a costly gift made from the first blood of a still-gasping mackerel!" was almost certainly a table condiment and made from blood and viscera of very fresh fish.

Sometimes handled by the diner and used in relatively small amounts over already cooked food. (Sally Grainger 'A New Approach to Roman Fish Sauce' -2007)
The other more commonplace kind of sauce was called liquamen and was used in the kitchen by the cook to add salt and ...

other more complex flavours to most dishes, just as we add salt during cooking. This was made using various kinds of whole small fish which were then mixed with salt and left to dissolve and ferment for up to three months.

The resulting liquefied fish was removed from its bone and shipped all over Mediterranean in special amphorae. This whole -fish sauce is very similar to the Thai fish sauces so popular today! Roman fish sauce was NOTHING like modern anchovy paste;

using the latter has been the downfall of many an attempt to recreate ancient recipes! ( Sally Grainger -The Classical Cookbook)
Fish sauce was manufactured at factory sites along the coast; these were typically beside a beach or a harbour.

The fish was only a few hours from the net when the process began. These sauces cannot and shall not be seen as a rotten decaying substance! What took place was not bacterial putrefaction (which, given the high proportion of salt would be impossible)

but enzymic proteolysis, a process in which the enzymes in the viscera of the fish convert the solid protein into a liquid form. The viscera is therefore essential to the process; without them the protein does not dissolve. [...]

What the modern gourmet has to understand, and probably some only know too well from modern experience, is that there was not a single Garum sauce. As always there was the elite one, one for commoners and many other versions in between. [...]

For example, when Martial describes this sauce being "made from the blood of a still breathing mackerel " it therefore implies this was a black and bloody sauce. Or, the surviving Greek recipes for fish sauce also affirm the importance of the distinction between...

...blood/viscera sauce and one made from whole fish. As we see things can get a little bit complicated when we muddle through the murky waters of ancient gastronomy!
One could buy aged elite black mackerel garum, ordinary black tuna garum,...

...elite liquamen cooking sauces made from mackerel or cheaper cooking sauces made with a mixture of clupeidae and sparidae, or a tuna or mackerel muria, both of which could also be aged or new. All of these products could also come in second or even third grade versions.

The expensive and intensely- flavoured blood sauce would be lost in the cooking process and wasted; it needed to be seen by the gourmet, to be experienced, valued and discussed. Therefore we can conclude it would have been the table sauces handled by the guests or ...

the host himself.
From modern South East Asian cuisine we learn of a fermented squid blood viscera (and ink) sauce that is used today in Japanese cuisine. It is known as ishiri and is used as a finishing sauce for sushi as well as cooked food.

Its taste neither fishy nor salty, and smells of the iron compounds from the blood. Japanese cuisine also has a whole-fish sauce called ishiru and many dishes are prepared with both i.e the whole fish sauce is used for cooking and the blood/viscera sauce finishes the dish.

This sauce is truly fermented with bacteria and low salt. It is quite remarkable that the Japanese word for viscera is gari! The sauce to me has a very subtle but satisfying flavour, soft fishy aromas and a smoky undertone! Truly an excellent product, from the Japanese masters!

But back to 300BCE or there abouts; In Roman cuisine, the use of garum was enriched with different combinations of the sauce -with honey (meligarum), vinegar (oxygarum), wine (oenogarum), water (hydrogarum), or dry spices (such as dill, oregano, coriander, celery, or even mint)

These sauces were used as condiments for literally everything: from meat and fish to vegetables, salads, desserts, bread, and wine dipping. The infamous gourmand of ancient Rome Apicius, who has the honour to have the oldest surviving cookbook to his name...

mentions it as an ingredient to many of his intriguing and extravagant recipes.
The best way to use it in all recipes is thus; Take a litre of grape juice and reduce it by half, cool it and blend a bottle of Thai nam pla fish sauce with it. (Or Vietnamese one, picture here)

My favourite recipe that includes garum is "Honey-Glazed Prawns with Oregano and Black Pepper" a relatively simple dish, which I've made countless times as a starter in one of my ancient Greek themed dinners!

For a decent starter for two, take 8 large prawns 15ml of EVO oil, 30ml of fish sauce 30gr of clear honey, a handful of chopped fresh oregano and black pepper. Place oil, fish sauce and honey in a saucepan, then add the prawns.

Sauté gently in the cooking liquor for 2 or 3 minutes. Remove prawns from sauce and keep them warm, cook the liquor a little longer so in reduces by half. Add oregano, pour over the prawns and sprinkle liberally with freshly ground black pepper. Serve with crusty bread.

Similarly, homemade smoked sausages with fish sauce are indeed a treat for every gourmet! Mince belly of pork, pine kernels, rue, peppercorns, savory, cumin, bay berries fresh parsley and simply grill them! Yum!

I hope you enjoyed this ancient food thread! If you need to dig deeper and find out more, I have a podcast with lots of ancient foods, recipes, ingredients and other fascinating archaeogastronomical mysteries!
https://shows.acast.com/the-delicious-legacy/episodes/the-galvanising-garum
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