The origin of fish sauce

Fish sauce is a well-known condiment in the cuisines of Vietnam, where it is known as nuoc mam, and Thailand, where it is called nam pla. It also turns up as a key flavouring in the Philippines (patis), Burma (ngan bya), Northern Malaysia (budu), Cambodia (teuk trei) Korea (jeotgal), and Japan (ishiru and shottsuru). Laos also has a chunkier variation called padaek. Fish sauce plays a vital role (particularly in SE Asia) in adding an umami (savoury) element to the flavour of food. It was once a common ingredient in China as well; indeed, there is a theory that the English word ketchup is ultimately derived from a Chinese term, ke-chiap, referring to a kind of fish sauce.

But while it is such a quintessentially Asian ingredient, you might be surprised that the Romans were using fish sauce far earlier. Not exactly the same thing, mind, but something eerily similar. Garum (and a similar product called liquamen) was a flavouring liquid made from fish innards and salt, left to ferment in vats. In fact it was originally an invention of either the Greeks or the Carthaginians, and it entered the Roman culinary pantheon when Rome conquered and/or traded with those regions.

Around 2000 years ago there was a thriving garum industry from the Iberian Peninsula to the Black Sea. But with decline of the Roman Empire also saw a decline in the use and production of garum, until it became virtually unknown in its former range. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Italian food knows that fish sauce is hardly a typical ingredient in La Cucina Italia. It did not totally die out, however, as several monasteries preserved the knowledge and continued making a kind of fish sauce, today known as colatura de alici, from Amalfi in the region of Campagnia. Colatura de alici is made from anchovies, as are most varieties of Asian fish sauce. Garum, however, utilised a wide variety of seasonally available fish, although anchovies were indeed a common component.

There appears to be no historical mention of fish sauce being used in Asia before the Early Middle Ages in Europe, which oddly enough is around the same time its use was dwindling in the remnants of the Roman Empire.

Laura Kelley of The Silk Road Gourmet contends in a recent interesting blog post that fish sauce passed from Europe to Asia along trade routes. This is quite certainly possible, as many other items passed back and forth between East and West long before Marco Polo's time. Remember that at one time Rome controlled land as far east as what is now Turkey - situated at one end of the Silk Road that led all the way to Chang'an in China. Wealthy Romans' diet revolved very heavily around spices, which meant that the likes of cinnamon (from Sri Lanka) and Nutmeg (from Indonesia) were highly prized commodities (often acquired through middle-men such as the Arabs. Silk, obviously, was traded and exchanged as gifts between China and Rome. So clearly there was some opportunity for a product such as garum to pass from the shores of the Black Sea to the South China Sea.

I'm somewhat sceptical of this though. I have little doubt that it was the Mediterranean that gave rise to the first fish sauce. However, I'm inclined to think that it was invented independently in two places, either in China or a neighbouring nation.

I have a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, by the time fish sauce is proven to be in use in Asia, its use around the Mediterranean seems to have already declined substantially. Would an increasingly marginalised product really have made it to Asia and spread so comprehensively throughout the region? It's certainly possible; we have no way of knowing exactly when fish sauce was first used in Asia, and during the era when it was the principal flavouring ingredient of the Roman Empire, it would make sense to send it eastwards as a trade or gift item. But for this to happen, it would have presumably arrived in Northern China, spread to Korea and Southeast Asia within the next 1000 years, but then faded from use in China itself. I'm just not sure if all that is more believable than an independent East Asian origin.

But primarily, it occurs to me that not only are many of the cuisines around Asia are heavily based around seafood, but fish sauce is only one of a number of seafood-based condiments employed in Asia to add that umami taste.

Sri Lanka has its indispensable "Maldive fish", dried fish (usually tuna) pounded into tiny splinters which is then added to all kinds of dishes. Similarly, the cuisine of Japan makes extensive use of dried bonito flakes, which go into the dashi (stock) which flavours virtually every Japanese dish with a hint of liquid. Malay cuisine is well-known for its extensive use of pungent shrimp paste, or blachan; this product is also commonly used in Thailand and Laos (where it is known as kapi), the Philippines (bagoong), Burma (ngapi), and Indonesia (terasi). One of the most distinctive flavours of Cambodian cookery is the fermented mudfish paste known as prahok. Tiny dried anchovies (ikan bilis) are an extremely common flavouring ingredient in Indonesian and Malay cooking as well.

So given the ubiquity of these seafood products as flavouring agents, I think it's only natural that fish sauce would have arisen independently somewhere in East Asia. Fish sauce is a logical way to use the abundant small fish that are caught in regions that rely heavily on fishing. And it's not so unusual for almost identical culinary ideas to arise in different regions with no relationship to each other. The chickpea flour pancake of southern France and Italy (socca or farinata) is uncannily like the pudla of Gujarat in India, yet no country in between those two regions seems to make use of this idea. Returning to seafood-based condiments, West Africa has its own as well, with cooks in places like Senegal and Ghana using powdered shrimps and marine molluscs to impart savoury flavours to their dishes.

I'm not sure if the truth will ever be known on this. In any case, it's somewhat amusing to reflect that the diets of a Roman Senator and a farmer in Vietnam would have shared an ingredient that both would consider indispensable.

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Only one of these is a joke

As much as I love hip-hop, it's a genre that is ripe for sending up. What with hip-hop artists' love of posing and posturing, and the genre's obsession with the macho and materialistic. And white people getting into hip-hop culture is always good fodder for satirising (given that the genre itself stems from a quintessentially African-American aesthetic of cool). Examples include numerous songs from Saturday Night Live, most notably Dick in a Box and I Just Had Sex.

But because so many artists in the genre take themselves so seriously even when being frankly ridiculous, it's sometimes hard to know whether they are playing it straight or being knowingly silly. In addition, satirical performers can sometimes be so good at their work that a lot of viewers won't get that it is a joke.

With that in mind, check out these two clips. Musical merits aside, both artists seem not only extremely lame but serious about what they are doing, at least on the surface. Yet one of them is tongue in cheek and the other is apparently deadly serious. It probably won't be too hard for you to guess which is which, but have a look.

The first one is Young Con Anthem by The Young Cons.


The second is Go Grab My Belt by Slick Mahony.


Did you pick it?

Upon first viewing The Young Cons' work, my reaction was that it was an SNL-style joke clip, based on a fairly hilarious comedic concept: a couple of lame white guys in suits rapping about their conservative values and trying to make it cool to be a Republican. I mean, c'mon... from the moment that guy said "Yo, one time..." you thought it was a joke, right?
But it soon became clear that this is not comedy; these actually are a couple of lame white guys in suits rapping about their conservative values and trying to make it cool to be a Republican.

I'm not a conservative. But if I was, The Young Cons would make me seriously reconsider my outlook on life. Let's all just accept that the Left has a lock on all the coolest musicians and actors. Right-wingers rarely pull off coolness very well, it's like a suit that just doesn't really fit. And Republican rappers? Nah. As Ice Cube declared in his 1991 track A Bird in the Hand, "Blacks are too f*ckin' broke to be Republican."

Slick Mahony, on the other hand, is a joke, although as joke tunes go, it's a totally mad one. His dance moves are to die for. He's one of the crew from Turquoise Jeep Records, responsible for one of my favourite songs from last year, Cavities by Flynt Flossy with Pretty Raheem and Whatchamacallit. All their songs are tongue-in-cheek, but just real enough to cause a little confusion among those urban music fans who aren't so good with irony.

To my mind, if you are the kind of artist who inspires people to ask, "Is this for real, or a joke?" it's kinda lame to actually be for real.

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Even cavemen aren't immune from sexual stereotyping

Seen this story doing the rounds?

First known 'gay' caveman
Scientists say that they have uncovered the first known gay caveman 5000 years after his death. Archeologists have uncovered the grave of a man they believed to have died between 2900 and 2500 B.C. and was seemingly buried in a way that suggests he was homosexual.
The skeleton of the man, found during an excavation in the Czech Republic, was found on his left side with his head facing west, buried with household jugs and no weapons.
An oval-shaped jug was also found near the feet of the skeleton.
During that period, men were traditionally buried with weapons, hammers and flint knives, and their bodies were placed on their right side with the head facing east.
Women were interred with their bodies on the left, head facing west, and buried with necklaces made from teeth, pets, and copper earrings, as well as domestic jugs and an egg-shaped pot placed near the feet.
Scientists are certain that the body placement was not a mistake, as customs were very strict on burial and funerals at the time.
"From history and ethnology, we know that people from this period took funeral rites very seriously so it is highly unlikely that this positioning was a mistake," said lead researcher Kamila Remisova Vesinova.
"Far more likely is that he was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transvestite. What we see here does not add up to traditional Corded Ware cultural norms."
There had been previous skeletons discovered where a female warrior had been buried like a man, and Siberian shamans, or witch doctors, had been buried in a similar way to the "gay" caveman, another member of the archaeological team, Katerina Semradova, said.
"This later discovery was neither of those. We believe this is one of the earliest cases of what could be described as a transvestite or third-gender grave in the Czech Republic."





Is it just me or does this sound like rubbish?

Now let me say from the start, I have no problem with cavemen being gay. What two or more consenting adult cavepersons do in the privacy of their own cave is no business of mine.

But to label a skeleton gay, on the basis that he associates more with household jugs than weapons... well, that doesn't work for me. Ok, so our prehistoric friend might have preferred working in the kitchen to fighting off cave bears with axes and flint knives. So what? If you don't prefer cooking and serving drinks to fighting for your life against wild beasts, there is something wrong with you.

So it assumes that gay cavemen weren't into rugged manly stuff like weapons, and that straight cavemen weren't into anything domestic. I thought scientists were beyond such unimaginative stereotyping. Next they'll be claiming, "This skeleton possesses an unusually limp wrist and appeared to be heavily involved in the Neolithic fashion industry."

This reminds me of the time at university when a female classmate was convinced I was gay because I enjoyed cooking, was vegetarian, and carried a small tube of moisturiser in my bag. Ok, maybe that does sound a bit gay, but whatever the case, I'm not. Sometimes, people are just individuals and don't fit neatly into narrow gender role stereotypes. Maybe the caveman buried with household jugs was a rabidly heterosexual ladies-man who just, well, had a thing for household jugs. And how do we know that one of the uber-manly cavemen buried with axes and knives wasn't also mad for cock?

Incidentally, they are not even cavemen, technically. By 2900 BC, Europeans most certainly had farms and houses and maybe even closets.

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Asian eyelid surgery in Australia

From ABCTV's show Hungry Beast this week.


A little bit of me died inside at the 2 minute 18 second mark when Heidi Liow, who no one could ever accuse of being ugly, says "I want to be beautiful" in the sort of way that you'd expect from someone who had been born with facial disfigurement.
Another part of me died when she speaks about people racially bullying her, and then says, "It makes me feel like there's something wrong with me."

No, child. When someone bullies you, there's something wrong with them. Never forget that.

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The geography of knob size

You may have caught this map going round the interwebs recently. (You can get a better look here, and it's based on data from here.) Having done a couple of posts in the last couple of years about race and penises, how could I ignore this? It's not an obsession of mine, I swear.

Anyway, at this point I'll just say straight up that if you are somehow reading this from the Democratic Republic of Congo, take a moment's break from dodging bullets in order to bask in some national pride, since your country is apparently a world leader in big-dickedness. DR Congo is the only country in the survey in which the average length tops 7 inches. It's also particularly impressive because the average age of Congolese surveyed was apparently only 16.3 years, meaning that some of the subjects are still growing! Heavens. Congratulations Congolese, you should celebrate. Just don't celebrate too wildly, you might take someone's eye out with that thing.  On the other hand, if you happen to be from South Korea... well, you may wish to stop reading this now. You don't come out of this with a whole lotta glory, I'm afraid. In fact, Asians in general are not overly flattered by this study, as you can see in the map.

Of course, I don't really put a whole lot of stock in these things, partly because as someone who is part-Asian, it does suit me to say "I don't believe in these things." But also because I'm not sure how you accurately take measurements of guys' erections. I mean, if some scientist dude orders me to muster one up and approaches me with a ruler, I'm not sure whether I'm going to be able to perform to the best of my ability. And some of the measurements come from self-reporting, which is some cause for scepticism. Self-reporting surely adds on at least another inch, I figure. For instance, Lebanon (self-reported) is listed as having an average length almost 3 cm longer than neighbouring Turkey, where the members were actually measured.
Notably, some of the biggest results come from countries in which the subjects self-reported. Including DR Congo! So are Congolese guys really the biggest in the world, or just the biggest liars?

That average age of 16.3 for the Congo puzzled me as well. So how many people under 16 were part of this survey? Because, well, they are considered children, and it's a brave man who visits a country as horrifically violent as the Congo and then goes around asking kids how big their penises are. I'm sure they lost many a good researcher that way.

If you know a little bit about human evolution, you'll know that it makes sense that Africans might have longer penises. Africans in general have longer limbs in proportion to their bodies than populations from other parts of the world; it's an adaptation to hot climates. Whereas East Asians, having evolved in a cold climate, generally have shorter limbs. So if that applies to limbs, it probably wouldn't be surprising  if it applied to genitalia as well.

Does having a big penis confer an evolutionary advantage? Probably not really, unless there is some advantage in being able to shag your partner while standing slightly further away from them than the next guy. Or if you live on the dangerous African savannah and need a weapon to club a lion to death with. Does it improve your chances of landing a mate? Not really. The nature of human sexual courtship means that by the time your ladyfriend is staring down the barrel of your member and in a position to analyse it, you're likely to be getting some action (and thus potentially passing on your genes) anyway.

Weirdly, coming second on the list after the DR Congo is Ecuador. Ecuador? Wow. For all the jokes and stereotypes I've heard over the years about black fellas and their trouser snakes, I've never heard anyone joke about being "hung like an Ecuadorian". What's more, unlike the Congolese, the Ecuadorian samples were actually measured by researchers, rather than being self-reported.
Maybe they used sexier research assistants for the Ecuadorian fieldwork, and the local fellas responded accordingly?
But it's not just Ecuadorians, but their neighbours too. Colombians, Peruvians, Bolivians and Venezuelans are all packing a fair whallop, all more than any European country. Maybe it's all that coca they chew.

As for Asian dudes, well... not to worry, I guess. Maybe next time don't turn the aircon all the way to extra-cold when some researcher is trying to measure your penis. And as so many women have expressed to me in the past with thinly disguised pity, it's not the size that matters, it's what you do with it. So some of y'all might need to start learning some tricks.

More seriously, this sort of thing is not good PR for Asian men in general, but personally I don't think it's cause for major concern. Most of us don't normally spend our days looking at other men's penises, so there's little point in worrying about how you compare with something else you're unlikely to ever actually see. Most women don't really care, anyway. For sexual satisfaction, skill is by far the most important attribute, followed by girth, with length just not a high priority.

Anyway, Asians are clearly doing something right. Over 1 billion people in both India and China shows that even if these studies are true, it's no impediment to getting one's swerve on.

Above: A cock from the Congo. Very impressive.

See also:

Race, IQ and Penis Size

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Happy now, Pastor Terry?

Reports are that at least 12 UN employees have been killed after a UN compound in Mazar-e-Sharif was attacked by a mob of as many as 2000 people protesting (peacefully at first) against the burning of the Qur'an by Pastors Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp in Gainsville, Florida. While today another 8 people have died and at least 61 injured after young men rampaged through Kandahar.

Last year, when Jones announced he was going to burn the Muslim holy book, thousands took to the streets in Afghanistan to protest, and a NATO base was pelted with stones, while in Kashmir a Christian Church was burned and 15 people killed. And that was only when he SAID he was going to do it (he subsequently decided not to).

For some reason, Jones decided to go through with it last week. And predictably, now that the news has filtered through to some of the most unruly parts of the Islamic world, all hell has broken loose.

Of course, the real villains here are those nutjobs who decided to vent their anger at some obscure attention-seeker from Florida on UN staff who had absolutely nothing to do with him. Let's not forget that.

But we all know these people exist. And if you're smart you don't rile them up. It's a shame that it has to be this way, but we all need to be careful of what we say when fundamentalist fascists are around, because they'll kill somebody.

Of course, Jones' point all along was that Islam is a religion of violence, and the Afghani protestors have clearly done him a huge favour with the predictably violent manner of their rebuttal.

Now personally I think in a perfect world, anyone should be able to burn a Qur'an or any other religious text. But the reality is that freedom of speech has its limits; the classic example of shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre is not protected speech, and what Jones has done is basically the equivalent of this. If it is obvious that your free expression is going to lead to violent unrest (and it was obvious in this case), then you need to face criminal consequences. This incident has potentially far worse consequences than what we have seen today; it could potentially set back UN and US efforts in Afghanistan back a decade.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

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Difference makers

Now and then you hear a nice story about how one inspiring person can make a huge difference on the world. Somali doctor Hawa Abdi is one such person, who got some much-deserved shine on ABC News this week.


And then there are those people who need to find better callings to base their lives around. Roy Den Hollander is one of those people. Stephen Colbert and his crew treat Roy with the ridicule he appears to deserve.

Roy has what some might refer to as "white people problems" (see here and here).

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