Today’s recipe is the pinnacle of zero-waste cookery. When all else fails and you have a compost bin full of vegetable scraps, they can still be saved by turning them into garum, an ancient Roman sauce traditionally made out of fermented fish and more recently other meat and plant products and even peelings. It’s similar to Worcestershire sauce, fish sauce and soy sauce, and is used in much the same way, to season and to add an incredible depth of flavour.
Garum has been repopularised and reinvented in recent years by fermentation experts such as Sandor Katz and Noma’s fermentation lab. Experimentation has led to all sorts of garums made with animal products and vegetables alike, using everything from eel and emu to coffee scraps and compost. When I spoke to Katz about making my own, he suggested being selective with my waste to create a more distinctive, better-flavoured end product – celeriac and onion skin garum, say, or leek top garum.
