Fish Sauce: A historical query

[v. gautam]

Is anyone familiar with Kem Bug Nut, a fermented fish product of Thailand's central and lower Mekong provinces? How is it used? Thanks.

[Adam Balic]

I'm guessing that it may be the fermented fish product Khem bak nad/Khem mak nad (bak/mak nad is dialect for "pineapple").

The is some information of the product on pg 164 of this google book link.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Gt_QnY...hl=en#PPA164,M1

[takadi]

Hmm, I've never heard of term "baluchuan" in my life nor have I seen such a fish paste. The majority of my family originated from Ha Noi, which probably explains why. I'm going to have to ask my grandmother about this though

[v. gautam]

Adam,

Thank you very much for the valuable reference, although I am sorry to be disabused of my marvellously memorable Bug Nut! The product sounds quite interesting, delicious even. Pineaple juice must be a strong proteolytic enviroment, so we can expect a richly flavored sauce high in glutamates, with the addition of the sugar, tartness and flavo components of fruit and fish.

I wonder how this is employed by its inventors, because your reference indicatestwo products using papaya and pineapple that must have come fairly late through inspired experimentation.

gautam

[Adam Balic]

Hmm, I've never heard of term "baluchuan" in my life nor have I seen such a fish paste.  The majority of my family originated from Ha Noi, which probably explains why. I'm going to have to ask my grandmother about this though

←

I would be interested in hearing what your grandmother had to say, and if any fermented fish condiments of this nature surived into the modern era.

[Adam Balic]

Adam,

Thank you very much for the valuable reference, although I am sorry to be disabused of my marvellously memorable Bug Nut! The product sounds quite interesting, delicious even. Pineaple juice must be a strong proteolytic enviroment, so we can expect a richly flavored sauce high in glutamates, with the addition of the sugar, tartness and flavo components of fruit and fish.

I wonder how this is employed by its inventors, because your reference indicatestwo products using papaya and pineapple that must have come fairly late through inspired experimentation.

gautam

←

Yes, I imagine that the fruit is used for it's protease activity. Pineapples were introduced into Southern China by the early 17th century, even earlier in India. So I guess this specific combination could be hundreds of years old. Possibly older if the pineapple and papaya are a replacement for an endemic fruit.

[v. gautam]

Actinidia, kiwifruit, would be endemic in South China and Yunnan, and has a powerful proteolytic activity. Several species of Actinidia including the the modern kiwi, an quite possibly several more fruit from the cashew nut and fig families. Mangifera spp. and Artocarpus spp. e.g. Artocarpus lakoocha could be a candiddate. Incidentally, our common dried fig is a powerful tenderizer and used very eefectively in northern India as a combination tenderizer, stuffing, flavorant et al. for rolled leg of lamb.

Dried fig soaked in whey or buttermilk, and any herbs you fancy ground to your liking rolled up in a butterlied leg of lamb, tied, marinated for a while, cooked in a romertopf or similar unglazed clay vessel under dum as we say in India, i.e. internally steamed externally vessel roasted on embers:delicious.

[Adam Balic]

Is the term "dum" referes to dum pukht? A great cooking technique.

[v. gautam]

Yes, pukht being an Indo-Iranian root as in Sansrit pAka, pakkva to cook, to ripen, cooked, ripened =pukht; dum as in breath, referring to the steam in an enclosed vessel placed on embers, a sort of makeshift pressure cooking, employing minimal water.

Indian meat braises are often said to be placed on "dum", i.e. "matured" on very low heat in an enclosed vessel. What you read in most popular books askin you to add water to "curries" and simmer is a wrong technique. People learn from a few popular writers imbibing really wrong technique and then consider great masters and experts of Indian cookery, pontificating at length.

Unfortunately, most of the popular writers are not masters of their craft, merely charismatic public figures. Meat cookery is not their forte. Sorry to say, nor do the tandurias understand the meat cookery of north Indian braises and gravies and rice-meat combinations. In the US, public cleverness is all that matters. If you are seriously interested, we can invite you to forums where we discuss minutiae of the meat and its cooking. It starts withthe feeding of the animal and the nature of the fat depots and types of fat and the liquid crstalline structure of the fat with each feeding regime. This has a direct relevance to what goes on during the "dum", the shape an size ofthe vese, and how ad wha sices ae absorbed.

[Adam Balic]

One thing that I have noticed over the last few years of travel is that meat dishes often don't translate very well as meat cuts, age of beast, species of beast, method of rearing, post-slaughter practices etc etc vary a great deal more then people acknowledge.

I have a very little knowledge of the dum pukt dishes due to the similarity in technique of some of these dishes and some related dishes (Hyderabadi biryani etc) and the tangia type dishes that are found in throughout North Africa and and other regions such as Turkey. A "tangia" is a specific dish found in Morocco, essential marinated meat cooked very gently in an upright clay pot cooked in a tannur (oven). There are similar dishes with different names found were ever tannurs are used. As you can most likely guess "tannur" and "tandori" are closely related.