Way out West (incorporating Way up North)

liquamen or garum?

We thought a salad nicoise would be nice, we have many suitable comestibles collected from the far flung corners of Europe. So, I was pottering about, putting together the ingredients when I had one of those ideas that in retrospect probably wasn't a good one. I'd brought some rather sumptuous anchovy fillets back from my recent trip to Murcia, but, while investigating the box with fish products in, I found a can of anchovies dating from an earlier trip to Spain.

On inspection, I thought the tin might be a little rusty, but, when I pulled the ring, I was taken aback when it rather spectacularly exploded, spraying jets of fermented anchovy up my sleeve (thankfully not all over the kitchen). A bit of scrubbing, and a change of clothes later, I was surprised to dicover that the contents of the can had completely dissolved; all that was left was some rather pungent and murky liquid, which, if I had the will or the vessel, might have formed the basis of a liquamen sauce. I shall bear this in mind in future.

Labels: anchovies

posted by Lampy @ 6/08/2010 07:36:00 pm