Fried 'dace' in black bean sauce
Today I’m heading for somewhat different territory. As I have mentioned before in these forums, China does very few canned foods. In most supermarkets, if they have a canned food section at all, it will be a couple of shelves with some spam-like meat products and some 鱼罐头 (yú guàn tou) – canned fish. 99% of those cans will contain 豆豉鲮鱼 (dòu chǐ líng yú) which translates as “fermented black bean dace”. However, 鲮鱼 (líng yú) is not ‘dace’ at all. It is actually Cirrhinus molitorella or Mud Carp. Real dace is Leuciscus leuciscus and seldom, if ever, found in China.
Mud carp are a freshwater fish, native to southern China and Vietnam. They have been cultivated in China for over 1,000 years and today are mostly farmed. Although, they are sometimes sold fresh, the majority of their meat is used in a number of industrially-made fish products including fish balls, fishcakes, dumplings etc. In 1893, a Guangzhou (Canton) company started canning these fried mud carps from the Pearl River with fermented black bean sauce.
These canned ‘dace’ have always been considered as food for the poor or, at best, as emergency rations. A 227 gram / 8 oz can costs in the region of $2 USD and the contents can be eaten straight from the can or with rice or noodles. The shelf life is stated to be three years. Probably actually much longer than that. Every cornershop has them.
The product is extremely salty. Ingredients are listed as dace, black beans, salt, vegetable oil, salt, soy sauce (with caramel colouring), sugar, spices and MSG. Yes, they list salt twice, plus it’s in the soy sauce.
Fried 'dace' in black bean sauce
There have been intermittent reports over the years of this product containing minute traces of malachite green, a chemical with carcinogenic properties although it is generally considered the levels are too low to constitute any danger.
But it does smell like cheap cat food.
Alternatives are few but do include these similarly priced 凤尾鱼 (fèng wěi yú) which are anchovies of some sort and are in a sauce full of similar ingredients. With there being somewhere between 140 and 160 (opinions vary) species of fish called ‘anchovies’, I’m not even going to try to start to identify them. I buy my anchovies from Italy.
Canned anchovies
An even cheaper (around $1.50 USD) choice is labelled as 豆豉海鱼 (dòu chǐ hǎi yú), which is ‘black bean sea fish’. I’ve never gone there. It could be anything.
We do get canned sardines, almost always in tomato sauce, in a few stores, but most of these are imported from Thailand or the Philippines. I buy canned Portuguese sardines. Expensive but wonderful!
Sardines from the Philippines
