Colatura di Alici (Italian Anchovy Sauce)

Colatura is a clear, amber-to-mahogany liquid made from two ingredients: anchovies and sea salt. It is not an extract, a reduction or a flavoured condiment. It is what the fish release as the salt slowly breaks down their proteins over months in a sealed barrel.

It is intensely salty and intensely savoury, and it is sold in small bottles (50 or 100 ml) because a recipe for four people uses about two tablespoons.

The protected name is Colatura di Alici di Cetara DOP, granted by the EU in 2020 after years as a Slow Food Presidium. Before any of that, it was simply what fishing families in one Amalfi Coast village made in their cellars for themselves.

The technique is the surviving thread back to garum, the fermented fish sauce that seasoned Roman cooking. The Roman garum workshops at Pompeii are about forty kilometres away.

Salt first, then a deep, round savouriness that spreads across the whole tongue and stays there. It is closer to the flavour of a very good anchovy fillet dissolved in warm oil than to anything fishy in the unpleasant sense.

Compared with Southeast Asian fish sauce, colatura is cleaner and less pungent. Because it is made only from beheaded, gutted anchovies with no water and no sugar added, it lacks the barnyard funk and the faint sweetness that nam pla and nuoc mam have. It smells of salt and clean sea rather than of fermentation.

On pasta it does not read as fish at all. It reads as depth: the same trick anchovy plays in a Caesar dressing or a Provençal daube, except undiluted.

Never heat it. Direct heat turns colatura bitter and burns off everything you paid for. It goes in raw, at the end, off the flame.

The defining dish is spaghetti alla colatura, and it is almost aggressively simple. Boil the pasta in unsalted water: the colatura brings all the salt. In a bowl, whisk together good olive oil, finely chopped garlic, chopped parsley, a little chilli and the colatura: about 30–40 g for 320 g of spaghetti, roughly one scant tablespoon per person. Drain the pasta, tip it into the bowl, loosen with a splash of pasta water and serve at once.

Do not add cheese. Pecorino or Parmigiano on this dish is the standard mistake: it buries the aroma and stacks salt on salt. If you want texture, use toasted breadcrumbs.

Beyond pasta, it is excellent over steamed or boiled greens (broccoli, chicory, escarole), over warm boiled potatoes, on buffalo mozzarella, whisked into a Caesar-style dressing, on a poached egg, or stirred into mayonnaise.

Because it is a saturated brine drawn off salted fish, the bottle is stable at room temperature and does not need chilling. Keep it capped tight, upright, in a dark cupboard away from the hob, and go by the producer date, which is usually set eighteen months to three years out. Light and warmth are what change it: over months on an open shelf the amber deepens towards dark brown and the aroma loses its top notes and turns flatter and heavier. Amber or green glass protects it better than clear glass, which is why most producers use it.

Once opened the same rules hold, and the practical enemy is evaporation: a loose cap leaves salt crystals crusting round the neck and the liquid slowly concentrates. Some producers suggest the fridge after opening, where it thickens slightly, may throw a fine deposit and can turn hazy as salt comes out of solution; the haze clears again as it returns to room temperature. Freezing serves no purpose, since the salt load keeps it from setting anyway. The bottle date and the producer are the reference.

It comes in small bottles, most often 40 to 100ml, and it should be clear enough to read light through: amber to mahogany, filtered, never cloudy or thick like a paste. The label lists two things, anchovies and salt. Water, sugar, flavourings or preservatives mean something else is in the bottle. The protected wording is Colatura di Alici di Cetara DOP, and serious producers state the year the anchovies were laid down, since the liquid is drawn off in December from fish salted the previous spring.

On a shop shelf the nearest neighbour is Southeast Asian fish sauce, which is thinner, paler, made with a very different fish to salt ratio and often carries added sugar or water. Worcestershire sauce, tubed anchovy paste and bottled anchovy essence are further away still. The price gap is the plainest signal there is: colatura runs 25 to 45 euro for 100ml in Italy and $18 to $35 abroad, while a large bottle of fish sauce costs a few euro. A cheap bottle labelled colatura is worth reading the ingredients on twice.

In the US, Italian specialists including Gustiamo, Eataly and Market Hall Foods carry Cetara colatura; a 100 ml bottle typically costs $22–40. In the UK, Sous Chef, Natoora and Italian delicatessens stock it at around £16–30 for 100 ml.

Read the ingredients before anything else. A real colatura lists two things: anchovies and salt. Water, sugar, vinegar, flavourings or preservatives mean you are buying an industrial fish sauce with an Italian label.

Look for Colatura di Alici di Cetara DOP if you want the guarantee: only a handful of producers are certified, among them Nettuno, Delfino Battista, Iasa and Armatore. Good uncertified colatura exists and should cost noticeably less.

The colour should be clear amber, not cloudy and not black. A 100 ml bottle will dress roughly ten dinners for four, which makes the price per plate far more reasonable than the price per bottle suggests.

Cetara, a working fishing village of about two thousand people wedged between the mountain and the sea on the Amalfi Coast, and effectively nowhere else. A handful of restaurants along its marina serve spaghetti alla colatura as the house dish, and two or three historic producers sell direct.

Go in August for the Notte delle Lampare, when the boats go out with their lamps lit as they did for night anchovy fishing and the eating happens along the harbour. The village also holds a summer festival dedicated to tuna, the other half of its economy.

Everything else on the coast is within a short drive: the ceramics of Vietri sul Mare, the Roman villa at Minori, Amalfi and Ravello. Cetara is the least touristed of its neighbours, largely because it is still a port that works.