11 June 2007
The Search For Anchovy Essence
Searching for a given obscure ingredient in Ireland can be a very difficult proposition. Dublin isn’t a big city, and there are a limited number of shops, but going through all of them on foot, searching the shelves, and asking shop assistants who don’t necessarily recognise what you’re hunting for, would probably take weeks. Given the range of Oriental, Afro-Caribbean, Polish and other ethnic shops that have appeared in the last few years, it’s not even certain that the item you’re looking for will have a name you recognise.
So my search for anchovy essence to use in a pork pie begins not with the grocery shelves, but with Google. That doesn’t look like it’s going to be great deal of use, since the first two results are recipes on thefoody.com, and the third is my own pork pie article here on Rocking Grass. Further down the page, there’s a reference to a 1979 HADAS newsletter, which says that the Roman fish sauce, liquamen, or garum, is vaguely like anchovy essence. I’m aware that garum is related to nam pla, a Korean fish sauce, so I make a note of that, too. However, this isn’t bringing up any nice retail sites with the words “we stock anchovy essence”, so I’m going to have to try another approach.
A little more research reveals that not only is anchovy essence related to garum and nam pla, something very similar is used in Middle Eastern cookery under the rather more proasic name of “fish sauce”. There are a few halal shops near us, so I went looking in Spiceland, which is on the odd branch of South Richmond Street onto Harcourt Road. In there, among many other interesting ingredients that I’ll have to go back for another look at, I found about six different brands of fish sauce.
After some browsing, I settled on Squid Brand Fish Sauce, which is a product of Thailand, and doesn’t contain any MSG, which the other brands there did. The ingredients are basically anchovies, salt, and sugar, so I’m fairly confident it’s close to what’s needed. I’ll try it, when I can, and report back. It’s a one litre bottle, and the recipe I’m using calls for about a teaspoon, so it should keep me supplied for some time if it turns out well. If not, well, I’m sure I can find some other use for it…