Stockfish 14
Kathrine Selvage
Stockfish is unsalted fish, especially cod, dried by cold air and wind on wooden racks (which are called "hjell" in Norway) on the foreshore. The drying of food is the world's oldest known preservation method, and dried fish has a storage life of several years. The method is cheap and effective in suitable climates; the work can be done by the fisherman and family, and the resulting product is easily transported to market.
Over the centuries, several variants of dried fish have evolved. The stockfish (fresh dried, not salted) category is often mistaken for the klippfisk, or salted cod, category where the fish is salted before drying. Salting was not economically feasible until the 17th century, when cheap salt from southern Europe became available to the maritime nations of northern Europe.
The word stockfish is a loan word from West Frisian stokfisk (stick fish), possibly referring to the wooden racks on which stockfish are traditionally dried or because the dried fish resembles a stick.[2] "Stock" may also refer to a wooden yoke or harness on a horse or mule, once used to carry large fish from the sea or after drying/smoking for trade in nearby villages. This etymology is consistent with the fact that "Stockma" is German for the height of a horse at the withers.[citation needed]
Stockfish is Norway's longest sustained export commodity. Stockfish is first mentioned as a commodity in the 13th-century Icelandic prose work Egil's Saga, where chieftain Thorolf Kveldulfsson, in the year 875 AD, ships stockfish from Helgeland in mid-Norway to Britain. This product accounted for most of Norway's trade income from the Viking Age throughout the Medieval period.[3]
The science of producing good stockfish is in many ways comparable to that of making a good cognac, Parma ham, or a well-matured cheese. Practitioners of the Slow Food movement insist that all these artisanal products must be made on a small scale and given time to mature.
The fish is prepared immediately after capture. After gutting the fish, it is either dried whole, or split along the spine leaving the tail connected. The fish is hung on the hjell from February to May. Stable cool weather protects the fish from insects and prevents an uncontrolled bacterial growth. A temperature just above zero degrees Celsius, with little rain, is ideal. Too much frost will spoil the fish, as ice destroys the fibers in the fish. The climate in northern Norway is excellent for stockfish production. Due to the stable conditions, the stockfish produced in Lofoten and Vesterlen is often regarded as the best.[citation needed] The traditional cod harvest in Lofoten also takes place during the best drying time. Due to a milder and more humid climate, salted/dried whitefish (klippfisk) was more common in the fisheries districts of Western Norway.
After its three months hanging on the hjell, the fish is then matured for another two to three months indoors in a dry and airy environment. During the drying, about 80% of the water in the fish evaporates.[9] The stockfish retains all[citation needed] the nutrients from the fresh fish, only concentrated: it is therefore rich in proteins, vitamins, iron, and calcium.
After sorting by quality, most of the stockfish is exported to Italy, Croatia and Nigeria.[10] In Norway and Iceland, the stockfish is mostly used as a snack and for lutefisk production. In Italy, the fish (called stoccafisso) is soaked and used in various courses, and is viewed as a delicacy.
Baccal alla vicentina, an ancient and traditional Italian dish native to Vicenza, is made from stockfish (confusingly not from dried and salted cod, although the salted form is known in standard Italian as baccal), and is served on or next to polenta. In the Italian region of Basilicata, the so-called baccal alla lucana is prepared with typical peppers called "cruschi" (dialect word for "crispy").[11] In Calabria, stockfish is widely used, especially in the western side of the region: pasta with stockfish is a staple in Christmas Eve.
Stockfish is popular in West Africa, especially in Nigeria where it serves as a flavor and fish in the many soups like Egusi, Edikaikong, Ofe nsala, Afang, Ukazi, Oha, Efo Riro, Okra, etc., that are eaten with fufu meals, such as pounded yam, fufu, and garri meals. It is the main ingredient in the Nigerian delicacy called "Ugba na Okporoko" or "ukazi" amongst the Igbo, Ibibio, Efik, Annang, Kalabari, Igbani, Ikwerre, etc., people of south eastern Nigeria. Most importers of "okporoko" are based in the town of Aba in Abia State. Among the Nri, Aro, Nkwerre, and Umuahia people, at festive periods, the popular meal is the Ukazi soup which is usually well-garnished with okporoko or cod as it is popularly called. The Kwe people, who are a fishing people of the English-speaking part of Cameroon, use stockfish in flavoring their palm nut or banga, which can be eaten with a cocoyam pudding called kwacoco. The name okporoko for stockfish, among the Igbo of Nigeria refers to the sound the hard fish makes in the pot and literally translates as "that which produces sound in the pot".[citation needed]
The stockfish Python package communicates with an instance of Stockfish Engine using the UCI Protocol, and the the protocol uses Long Algebraic Notation for moves, which means promotions are encoded as a sequence of 5 characters: two for the source square, two for the destination square, and one for the piece that the pawn is being promoted to.
The head of the stockfish, which I imagine the Norwegians used to toss in the bin, is a particular favourite in many parts of Nigeria. It is popular in the east as it adds an extra flavour that enriches the soup.
I also wish the fairy tale would end there, but in revenge for being so tasty, the Stockfish is also one of the smelliest in the world. It is a heavy, intrusive smell that has visitors gagging and frantically searching for the hidden rotten corpse in a home. I love eating Stockfish! To avoid the smell, you could soak it for a few days, but it could mean a loss of some of the intense flavour.
If crayfish or prawn and the Stockfish are not enough, I add my favourite msg avoiding flavour, iru. Iru is fermented locust beans. Now, most of you know that gone off beans is already evil-smelling. Locust beans once fermented smell like the sweaty foot odour of a roomful of athletes locked in a storage cupboard. It is also highly nutritious.
Nigeria is the largest importer of Stockfish in the world. They go through tons of them each year as we could never have enough. The Norwegian seafood Council in Nigeria celebrated the first Seafood Festival in October 2018.
My visitor might, at this point, do a double-take and perhaps hold their breath when they come into my home. But give them some pounded yam with the soup or amala (fermented yam powder) or rice. Your visitor is smiling from ear to ear, and of course, I am thrilled!
Norwegian stockfish has a distinctive taste and delivers a history beyond the product itself, providing for the authentic seafood experience. The cod is sustainably caught by dedicated fishermen when the quality is at its best. It is dried outdoors on racks according to the long traditions of genuine Norwegian craftmanship, taking advantage of the natural conditions of Northern Norway to make a truly unique product. The drying-method is thousands of years old, and it preserves the fish perfectly.
Castel Vittorio is an ancient medieval village that has dominated the Val Nervia from above since the 12th century. We are in the backcountry of Ventimiglia, on the border with France. The locals here are very proud not only of their past, full of conquests and...
Brandacujun is a West Liguria dish that combines land and sea, based on potatoes and stockfish, where extra virgin olive oil is a key ingredient. In Italian cuisine, extra virgin olive oil is generally used as a condiment or as a base for fried foods. However, there...
Stockfish,
an UCI compatible open source chess engine developed by Tord Romstad, Marco Costalba, Joona Kiiski and Gary Linscott [3], licensed under the GPL v3.0. Marco forked the project from version 2.1 of Tord's engine Glaurung, first announced by Marco in November 8, 2008 [4], and in early 2009 Joona's Smaug, a further Glaurung 2.2 derivative, was incorporated [5] . Starting out among the top twenty engines, Stockfish has quickly climbed in strength to become the world strongest chess entity as of 2018 - at least concerning the AlphaZero hype [6], public available chess entity. The name "Stockfish" reflects the ancestry of the engine. Tord is Norwegian and Marco Italian, and there is a long history of stockfish trade from Norway to Italy (to Marco's home town of Vicenza, in fact). Stockfish also referred another famous "little fish", the then strongest chess engine Rybka. In 2011, Marco Costalba and Joona Kiiski stepped down as Stockfish maintainers [7]. From that, the project is being developed and maintained by the Stockfish community.
A synergy effect with the Shogi community led to the promising branch of Stockfish NNUE, courtesy of Nodchip, who introduced NNUE to Stockfish in 2019 [8]. On September 02, 2020, Stockfish 12 was released with a huge jump in playing strength due to NNUE and further tuning of the engine [9]. The release of Stockfish 13 on February 19, 2021, has been triggered by the start of sales of the Fat Fritz 2 engine by ChessBase, based on a recent development version of Stockfish with minor modifications [10]. Stockfish 14, released on July 02, 2021, further improved due to efforts by Tomasz Sobczyk and Gary Linscott in designing a new NNUE architecture in conjunction with a GPU accelerated trainer written in PyTorch. Further, the collaboration with the Leela Chess Zero team payed off, in providing billions of positions to train the new NNUE [11].
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