Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [25]
The antiquity of the trade pleases me. It goes back to the ancient Greeks and Romans who relied heavily on a sauce called garum or liquamen (garon is Greek for shrimp, but many other fish were used, including the anchovy). The intestines, liver and blood were pickled in salt, the superb Mediterranean sea salt which still makes a moon landscape of shining white on many parts of the coast. After weeks in the hot sun, a dark rich essence was produced and sold in trademarked bottles. I read recently that a similar product was used in Turkey, for marinading fish, until the last century.
Anyone who has looked at Rosemary Brissenden’s or Sri Owen’s or Jennifer Brennan’s books of South-East Asian cookery will notice the ubiquity of fish sauce in Thai cooking. It seems the precise equivalent of garum. So does the Nuoc Mam of Vietnam and the blachan and trasi used all over South-East Asia, made from prawns or shrimps, salted, dried, pounded and rotten, then formed into cakes. Right back to fifth century Athens. All these fishy sauces were and are used to enhance meat dishes, rather as the Chinese use soy sauce.
I trust this will encourage you to believe me when I suggest that anchovies and anchovy essence can enrich our own meat cookery. If you have ever eaten pork pies from the Melton Mowbray area, you were not I expect aware that they were probably seasoned with anchovy essence. Try it to flavour a steak and kidney stew or pie. (Substitute it for oysters, which are now too expensive to be used recklessly as a seasoning, as they once were.) If you have no wine, anchovy essence wonderfully improves a shin of beef stew. Anchovy mayonnaise (p. 54) goes well with cold beef and baked potatoes. In the past legs of lamb were stuck with slivers of anchovy as well as garlic.
With vegetables, less persuasion is needed. Most people know and like cauliflower boiled in the usual way, then dressed with anchovies, melted butter and breadcrumbs (or chicory, or Florentine fennel, or celery). The finest of such dishes comes from Piedmont.
ANCHOVY BUTTER
Add 6–8 anchovy fillets, well mashed, to 125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter.
ANCHOVY, GARLIC AND CAPER SAUCE
An eighteenth-century sauce that goes beautifully with hard-boiled eggs – halve them across, spread the sauce on a dish and put the eggs, cut side down in neat rows on top. Allow 6–9 eggs. Serve it with cooked haricot beans, salt cod and grilled white fish, or tuna.
Serves 6
10–12 large cloves garlic, in their skins
8–10 anchovy fillets
2 tablespoons small capers
dash of wine vinegar
salt, pepper
about 12 tablespoons olive oil
Simmer the garlic in water to cover for 7 minutes. Cool under the tap, remove their skins and put them into a blender (better than a processor for this kind of sauce) with the anchovies, capers, vinegar and a little seasoning. Whizz to a purée, then slowly add the oil to make a sauce of mayonnaise consistency. Taste and adjust seasonings.
This is a strong sauce – you could use half sunflower or safflower oil and half olive oil to make it blander.
ANCHOVY SAUCE
Liquidize 6 anchovy fillets with 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter. Reheat this mixture and stir into the béchamel sauce* just before serving.
NOTE I much prefer a simpler anchovy sauce for fish, particularly for white fish of the cod type which can do with a little assistance. Melt 125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter and add a finely chopped clove of garlic; simmer slowly for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, crush 6 to 8 fillets of anchovy. Stir them into the melted butter, keeping on a low heat until the anchovies have disintegrated into the sauce. Check the seasoning, and add some freshly ground black pepper. This is