Mediterranean umami consists mainly of good dense tomato paste, which flavors this delicious red-lentil-faro-chickpea soup; and also oyster sauce, the equivalent of ancient garum...
Variations on this heartwarming, soup are infinite. The creamy red lentils regain their attractive color, which is lost when they are cooked alone, when simmered with carrots, a good amount of tomato paste and plenty of Maraş pepper.
My twist is to add some oyster sauce, which complements the tomato paste and deepens its flavors, much like the ancients added garum, which “enjoyed its greatest popularity in the Western Mediterranean and the Roman world, and it was in earlier use by the Greeks. The taste of garum is thought to be comparable to today’s fish sauces,” as Wikipedia states. (scroll down for the recipe).
A good amount of dense tomato paste is ubiquitous in the majority of vegetable and meat dishes in Greece and all around the Eastern Mediterranean. But long before tomatoes were brought to us from the Americas and became popular, people here still used some kind of fish sauce for which I found a recipe in a 1950ies Greek fish cooking book.
Dried tiny fish which are sold as condiments in Morocco and Tunisia, as well as mashed anchovies, still occasionally provide umami flavor in the cooking of Provence and Southwest France. I first encountered it in Paula Wolfert’s utterly delicious Roast Shoulder of Lamb with Anchovies from her incomparable Cooking of South West France, originally written in 1983 and revised in 2005. The shoulder of lamb is stuffed with mashed anchovies and garlic and left to marinate overnight before it is roasted. The result is a hauntingly delicious meat that is hardly fishy at all! Southern Italians also use anchovies as flavoring in pasta, risotto, and vegetable dishes.
Inspired by ancient garum, the inhabitants of Cetara in Campagnia, a lovely fishing village known for its abundance of excellent anchovies, have devised a new, lighter sauce, inspired from the ancient garum. It is called Collatura di Alici, and unlike the ancient dense garum that was made from all kinds of fermented fish entrails, mostly mackerel, this new delicate amber sauce, is made from anchovies fermented traditionally in chestnut barrels. But it is not easily available here.
On the other hand the traditional Asian fish sauces are, I believe, a very good substitute for the ancient garum. Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia), mainly use fermented fish sauces, readily available everywhere these days, while in Northeast Asia (China, Korea, Japan), the ancient fish sauces were mostly replaced by fermented beans.
I know that many people have an aversion to anchovies but good Asian oyster or fish sauce is an excellent condiment for all kinds of bean and vegetable dishes, the well-kept secret of chefs who want to add umami flavor without any fishy hints. I urge you to try it in this delicious, complex red lentil soup and find out for yourselves (scroll down for the recipe).
I am fascinated by the writings of Arundhati Roy! I started with The God of Small Things, not a very easy read in the beginning, “what sustains us through this dread-filled dance between the calamitous past and the bleak present is the exuberant, almost acrobatic nature of the writing itself,” wrote Alice Truax in the NYT review in 1997, when apparently the book was published in the US, probably after winning the Booker price.
Then I read her last, autobiographical Mother Mary Comes to Me where she describes her life and the extremely difficult relations with her larger than life mother, a woman who built an incredible school in Kottayam, Kerala, and strived to give Indian women power. But she was extremely cruel to her daughter. Arundhati Roy is an activist, engaged in many social and political struggles and reading the fascinating events of her life we learn a lot about the desperate political and social life of India.
Red Lentil, Faro, and Chickpea soup
Serves 6 to 8
1/4 cup (60 ml) olive oil, plus 1/3 cup (80 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup (160 g) chopped onions
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (220 g) red lentils rinsed in a colander under running water
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