Ancient Roman Muria - Ancestor of Colatura di Alici - Quick Garum Substitute

Welcome to our kitchen. Today we prepare muria, a fish sauce similar to colatura di alici that may be used as a quick substitute for garum and we'll use it to season some ancient Roman appetizers. We start with the ingredients. We need black mustard greens, eggs, red wine vinegar, olive oil, black pepper, asafoetida, rue, and the main ingredients for these appetizers, salted fish and muria. First, we prepare the muria. We need fish and salt. We chose sardines, but you can use any fish. We used about 3 and a half kilos of fish and 1 and a half of salt. We cleaned the sardines, we removed the guts, head, and bone. Then, we arranged salt and fish in alternating layers. If you have seen our video about garum, you can notice a substantial difference between garum and muria. Not only the method is quicker, but to make muria we didn't use fish guts, which contain the enzymes that will dissolve the fish. This will not happen with muria and therefore the flavor will be different, with a lower glutamate content and, as a consequence, with less sapidity. This means that the outcome will result more salty to our taste. even if we use the same quantity of salt and less flavorful than garum. But keep in mind that garum is extremely flavorful, so a sauce less flavorful than garum is in any case very intense and sapid. Salted fish and muria were quite popular in ancient Rome, as we read, for example, in the works by Marshal Horace and Ausonius, who reports in the 4th century that muria was commonly used by Plebeians. We find muria also among the foods listed in the Tablets of Vindolanda, an important source for the alimentation of the Roman army. It was frequently used instead of garum as a cheap substitute. Salted fish, in addition, is an ingredient of a few recipes in De Re Coquinaria. We prepared one of them in the past. You find the links to the recipes for garum and salted fish in the description below. To know more about ancient Roman fish sauces, preserves, and ingredients, check out our new book, Ancient Roman Cooking, available in English and Italian on Amazon in both e-book and printed edition. After a few days, you can use muria in salted fish, but the more you let the fish cure in its brine, the more the flavor of muria will be complex. Our muria is a bit cloudy. This is due to why the temperature changes and does not compromise preservation, but if you preserve it at more or less constant temperature, you will obtain a clear liquid. As mentioned in the beginning, muria can be considered the ancestor of colatura di alici. The principles are the same, and to make both, we need to use gutted fish. To prepare colatura di alici, we must clean the fish and then place it in a vase, alternating it with layers of salt, exactly as we did here, and place weights on the fish to squeeze it for a couple of days. Then, we have to sift the liquid again and again for a long time, up to 3 months, to make the liquid absorb well the taste of the fish and age it. To make muria instead, we followed the directions provided by Columella in De Re Rustica, which describes step by step how to preserve pieces of meat, adding that also fish is kept in its muria. In the ancient texts, muria has two meanings. The first is simply brine. The second is the brine produced by salting fish and meat. The kind of muria used in cuisine is fish muria. To know more about how ancient Roman cured meat, check out our Patreon page. Now, we prepare an ancient Roman appetizer based on muria and salted fish. Marcial, in his epigrams, describes frequently the plates served at his home, from which we took inspiration. One of them is fish, fresh or salted, seasoned with roux and served with hard-boiled eggs cut into slices. It is unclear whether the eggs are somehow dressed. We chose an egg recipe from De Re Coquinaria, but the eggs will be perfectly good even without further condiments. We added to this simple plate a side dish with greens, another kind of plate very common among the appetizers, following another recipe from De Re Coquinaria. We harvest some wild herbs and boil them for a couple of minutes, but the cooking time depends on how tender they are. We chose black mustard greens since autumn here was quite warm and lots of them are growing in the fields around home. The recipe just calls for wild herbs, erbe rustice in Latin. Choose the herbs you have at disposal among the ones that were used in the Old World. For example, borage, mallow, poppy leaves, or nettles. Then, we prepare a simple condiment. The recipe calls for garum, vinegar, and olive oil. We substituted garum with muria. A variant for this recipe calls for arranging the herbs in a pan, adding to the mentioned ingredients pepper, cumin, and lentil berries, warming them on the fire for a short time. Again, from De Re Coquinaria, we prepare a quick sauce for the hard-boiled eggs. We grind the black pepper, grate the asafoetida, and dilute them with muria. Also in this case, we substituted garum with muria. As we said before, muria and garum are quite different. Muria seems more salty and less sapid. As a consequence, we must use just a bit of it, but the dish will have less flavor than using garum. Muria tastes a bit like salt water, which is one of the meanings of the Greek word anmuris. This is interesting because Horace, in one of his satires, writes that the juice of unwashed sea urchins is better than muria, and actually the flavors are quite similar. In any case, muria is worth a try, mainly because it is very easy and quicker to prepare than garum and its aroma is very good. We briefly simmer the salted fish. If you prefer, you can also soak it in water for a few hours to remove a bit of saltiness. The cooking time changes depending on the size. For small fish, 30 seconds are enough. If you simmer it for too long, the salted fish will dissolve. We suggest keeping your salted fish in its muria, storing it in a cool place. Pay attention when you use either the fish or muria that the fish remains well covered with the liquid to prevent it from spoiling. Meanwhile, we mince the rue, which we'll use to season the salted fish. If you don't have rue, you can use arugula or parsley instead. The flavor of the fish is intense, with a strong and delicious aroma, surely worth a try. A dish meant to be eaten in small quantities, accompanied by vegetables and bread. The grains and the eggs are simple but incredibly good, with a slight aroma of salt water given by muria. Other excellent pairings with these dishes are bread, for example mustacei, slightly sweet with grape juice, and epityrum. You find the links to the videos in the description below. If you're interested in ancient foods and flavors, subscribe our channel and consider supporting us on Patreon.