Interesting note about Worcestershire sauce: Not that this will be a surprise in light of the previous comments, but supposedly the longer you sit it around the better it gets. I have never been able to test this assertion myself since I go through the stuff at an alarming rate and have never kept a bottle more than a couple of months.SY said:
Anyhoo, Worcestershire sauce and red wine vinegar are the base ingredients for one of my absolute favorite barbecue sauce recipes! Mix the two 1:1 and add some paprika (Now add some more. You know you didn't put enough in the first time!), chili pepper, sage, thyme, cayenne pepper, and enough tomato paste to get it a LITTLE thick (be sure not to add too much or it will burn while cooking) and some butter (probably better use just half the stick). Simmer that mixture for as long as you can and brush the sauce on while you are cooking the meat. This goes best with chicken or pork, and I would strongly recommend against using this with beef. Vinegar based barbecue sauces and beef don't mix!!!
This was essentially the recipe as it was told to me, and if I gave you any more information that this, it wouldn't make you try it again and again with different ratios! Just remember, this is NOT a sweet bbq sauce like you buy in the grocery store! This is a sauce to be cooked onto the meat! If you try and eat this by putting it on the meat AFTER it is cooked, the sauce will NOT taste right. Trust me on this one, I have experience! That being said, I usually taste the sauce as I am making it to be sure everything is in the right ratio even though it is quite an intense taste undiluted. Not that it ever turns out exactly the same way twice. . . . .
If you want to convert it to a sweet sauce, use ketchup instead of tomato paste, and add brown sugar until it is palatable straight up. This is also very good, but I must admit to being a barbecue snob, so sweet sauce or St. Louis style bbq are sacrilege in my book.
SY said:
Hhmm, no, I think not. W sauce is mainly herbs and spices, and garum is just fermented fish. But see it in context (like some medieval receipes I've seen and shuddered at the amount of spices) - in times when there were no refrigerated trucks and no fridge in the kitchen, the meat could be rather high (well, alive again) before it reached the pan...acquired taste maybe, but better having lotsa spice than having the Guatemalan quickstep.
Bon appetit,
😉
Pit
The key component of Worcestershire sauce is fermented anchovies. The connection to garum is nicely detailed in Harold McGee's classic "On Food and Cooking."
Unfortunately I did, but I am always in denial. 😀Nordic said:
It just tastes SO GOOD. . . . .
PS Fish sauce has got to be the nastiest food substance on the planet. I would have to pull pure organic amine bases off the shelf in my lab to get stuff that makes me want to wretch more violently. Still, I love Thai food. Go figure.
SY, that's interesting. I wonder how close Worcestershire sauce and garum are, and if W sauce could give a reasonable clue to how garum tasted?
BTW, according to what I have read, the romans still hadn't identified salt as a substance, so the main reason for using garum in cooking was to get a salty taste.
BTW, according to what I have read, the romans still hadn't identified salt as a substance, so the main reason for using garum in cooking was to get a salty taste.
As a vegetarian, the issue is purely academic to me.😀
If I were to guess, Nam Plah is probably closer to garum than Worcestershire sauce is; the former has fewer other flavor/aroma additives.
If I were to guess, Nam Plah is probably closer to garum than Worcestershire sauce is; the former has fewer other flavor/aroma additives.
Christer,
they knew it was a substance, but it was a very expensive one - soldiers got part of their pay in salt (that's where the German word "Sold" for a soldier's paycheck stems from)! And the title of one of my favourite Steeleye Span (Britfolk music) LPs was "Below the Salt" - when you were of low station in the household, your place at the common table was where you couldn't reach the stuff. Arrgghhh, it makes you shudder - especially if you ever had to live(?) on hospital food.
Greetings to up North - first snow coming in already?
Pit
they knew it was a substance, but it was a very expensive one - soldiers got part of their pay in salt (that's where the German word "Sold" for a soldier's paycheck stems from)! And the title of one of my favourite Steeleye Span (Britfolk music) LPs was "Below the Salt" - when you were of low station in the household, your place at the common table was where you couldn't reach the stuff. Arrgghhh, it makes you shudder - especially if you ever had to live(?) on hospital food.
Greetings to up North - first snow coming in already?
Pit
Most nations in Asia have similar stuff, such as shottsuru in Japan.
Given the highly experimental Roman cuisine and abundant ansjovies supply in the Med. , likely that Garum was very much the same.
I'm the twit of the family: everytime i visit France or Italy i bring home 80 to 100 lbs of sea salt, dirt cheap overthere. Maybe i'm a genius.
(most South Africans going roundabout i met paid part of their travelling by selling junk for big bills in Central Africa while driving through, cheap stuff they brought along)
Academic Q of the day: is it ok for vegetarians to eat sea salt ?
(i like Fleur de Sel salt leaves)
Given the highly experimental Roman cuisine and abundant ansjovies supply in the Med. , likely that Garum was very much the same.
I'm the twit of the family: everytime i visit France or Italy i bring home 80 to 100 lbs of sea salt, dirt cheap overthere. Maybe i'm a genius.
(most South Africans going roundabout i met paid part of their travelling by selling junk for big bills in Central Africa while driving through, cheap stuff they brought along)
Academic Q of the day: is it ok for vegetarians to eat sea salt ?
(i like Fleur de Sel salt leaves)
Academic Q of the day: is it ok for vegetarians to eat sea salt ?
Considering that salt is a part of animal (so human as well) body chemistry you might not want to mention you do 😉
Pit
Considering that salt is a part of animal (so human as well) body chemistry you might not want to mention you do 😉
Pit
As far as I'm aware, no animals are killed to get sea salt. And if they are, I don't want to know about it.😉
SY - your dry as dust comments and your tagline make my day! Just sent the latter to my favourite netfriend who needs all the laughs she can get (Dad doing poorly) and she got her knickers in a twist. Thanks mate.
Pit
Pit
SY, blokes,
does anyone remember a book called "Cooking in a Bedsitter"? Written by Katherine wassername...(old brain not cranking all cylinders here) - can't find the book here in hunland, but some of her "quick and dirty" are a boon when the rugrats cry for food.
Eat all you can - "tomorrow"means "one can less left".
Pit
does anyone remember a book called "Cooking in a Bedsitter"? Written by Katherine wassername...(old brain not cranking all cylinders here) - can't find the book here in hunland, but some of her "quick and dirty" are a boon when the rugrats cry for food.
Eat all you can - "tomorrow"means "one can less left".
Pit
Pit Hinder said:
OK, maybe I misremember, or my source was wrong, about the romans not knowing about salt. However, the explanation would still make sense that they used garum mainly "as salt".
I do wonder about your suggested etymology of the word "sold", though. When I check what the Swedish Academy has to to say about the etymology of the swedish word "sold", it is traced back through various german(ic) languages to italian and back to the latin word "solidus", which was a gold coin used to pay the roman soldiers.
Well, we a little bit of snow alrady in late october, I think, but which melted away in a few days. This has otherwise been the warmest autumn ever, or at least in a hundred years or so, and it is still much warmer than usual. No white Christmas in sight this year, except up in the north of the country.
Pit Hinder said:
Don't know about it, but if you can read swedish, there is a farly new book about how to cook food on the car engine while driving. (Yes, I know that is not new at all, and there seems to be a lot of enthusiast doing that in the US, but maybe ther hasn't been any proper coocking book before?) 🙂
I'm reminded of a friend's dad who, during his helicopter pilot days in the Vietnam "War," would warm his MRE's on the helicopter's hot engine after a day in the air of getting shot at. Between that and the screwdriver, military cooking has never been more amusing. 😀Christer said:
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