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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2013 20:29:32 GMT
I am thinking of soy sauce today simply because I bought a new bottle a couple of days ago and am already regretting my choice. Everybody knows that soy sauce is basically black, but at the store I had a choice between "dark" and "light" soy sauce. I bought the dark and when I used it, it was like putting dye on my food. Everything (meat, vegetables) turned completely black. It tasted fine but was visually very unpleasant to me. I figure it will still be fine in soup where it is extremely diluted or else used on pasta with parsimony, but I will avoid cooking with it again.
The other Asian wet stuff that I use regularly is Vietnamese nuoc mam, called "fish sauce" in most countries. It does smell quite fishy since it is distilled out of perfectly disgusting rotten fish (I went to a factory), but when you use it in cooking, it adds a pleasant (to most of us) non fishy flavour to all sorts of things -- chicken, beef, sautéed vegetables... It's sort of one of those MSG food enhancers without MSG. Does anybody else here use it?
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Post by lagatta on Nov 4, 2013 22:10:16 GMT
I use nuoc mam all the time. I love it. Indeed its manufacture is probably better overlooked... It is used a bit the same way anchovies might be; umami.
I had the same problem with the dark soya sauce. I bought a bottle a couple of years ago, and only use it when I want a dark colour, say in a stew - it takes very little to achieve that. Japanese tamari is always light, in my experience.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2013 22:40:45 GMT
Yes on the nuoc mam. Essential for Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. I bought a bottle and split it between Seattle and Vancouver as I don't imagine I'll use it up before I die.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2013 22:52:37 GMT
I buy at least 3 one-litre bottles of nuoc mam a year.
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Post by lagatta on Nov 4, 2013 22:54:21 GMT
Lizzie, do you have an abode in each of those Raincoast cities, a companion or family in the non-residential one, or something else entirely?
I suspect I'll go through more than one before I die, though obviously one never knows. Friends would take the leftovers. Of course you have such stellar Southeast Asian food in those two cities!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2013 23:36:36 GMT
Well, I live in Vancouver and my husband lives in Seattle. And we have an acreage on Whidbey Island, but no kitchen there yet, although we have kitchen supplies for our camping efforts. Unfortunately, my Seattle kitchen is becoming far more supplied with tools and foodstuffs because I do most of my cooking there. When I'm in Vancouver I'm usually only cooking for myself.
Fabulous food here, but perhaps more fabulous in Montreal!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 5, 2013 0:45:24 GMT
Well there you go, Kerouac, you do so much more Asian cooking than I ever will. However, I go through horrible amounts of olive oil and various vinegars. And cornichons. I am about to embark on my first bottle of sriracha sauce because I've heard so much about it. I love hot stuff, my husband doesn't, so any time I can ramp up my portion of food on the plate, it's good.
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Post by Breeze on Nov 5, 2013 4:25:51 GMT
We have Three Crabs brand in the fridge and are thinking we'll try Squid brand on our next trip to an Asian grocery. We like it now, but our first encounter was not encouraging.
When we were leaving Morocco to go to Algeria years and years ago we wanted to spend all our Moroccan money, which we did at Oujda on the border. In town was a well-stocked grocery store with a lot of exotic-to-Morocco ingredients. As I recall, we bought a lot of spices and one dusty bottle of nuoc mam. We didn't finish the bottle over the next 10 months.
Two years later a friend who'd lived in Algeria asked us why our car smelled like an Arab grocery.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 5, 2013 5:49:36 GMT
Fabulous food here, but perhaps more fabulous in Montreal! A friend of mine who definitely knows good food spent part of this past summer in Quebec. She claims that you can get really nice food there even from a filling station. I go through horrible amounts of olive oil That would be me, too. It's the only oil I use for everything, not counting toasted sesame oil for flavoring. Two years later a friend who'd lived in Algeria asked us why our car smelled like an Arab grocery. *snork!* So, back to the OP & the business at hand ~~ I bought the dark and when I used it, it was like putting dye on my food. Everything (meat, vegetables) turned completely black. It tasted fine but was visually very unpleasant to me. So true! And you have to shake the damned stuff, which makes it drool down the side of the bottle. Yuck. So yes, I have the same take on it as you & LaGatta. However, I did find one single stellar use for it, which is in boiling udon. It has the heft to impart flavor, and all the boiling water mellows it out. Still, I don't see myself buying another bottle of it if this one ever runs out -- it's enchanted & the level never seems to go down. My brand of fish sauce is Lucky, due to that being the only brand available around here. My favorite use for it is in salads. I put all the ingredients in the salad bowl, making sure the tomatoes are on top, then I sprinkle Lucky directly on the tomatoes before grinding on some black pepper, drizzling on the olive oil & adding vinegar or lime juice. Comes out perfect every time, without that feeling that the tomatoes need more salt while everything else is already salty enough. It's also nice splashed on to hot broccoli, again followed by some olive oil. |
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 19, 2018 17:01:47 GMT
My Chinese supermarket is a constant delight, but it is probably difficult for a lot of you to picture it. I needed to buy more soy sauce the other day, so I took a photograph of just a part of the shelf that houses that item along with nuoc nam, oyster sauce and all that other stuff. |
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 19, 2018 17:53:54 GMT
I needed to buy more soy sauce the other day, so I took a photograph of just a part of the shelf  If I had been there when you took the picture, I would still be there endlessly reading labels and dithering and asking other shoppers which brands they recommended.  |
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Post by lagatta on Mar 19, 2018 18:30:54 GMT
"Mine" in the sense of the one closest to me which I patronise, is smaller than K2's, but a couple of others are huge. We don't have a T&T here yet - closest one is in Ottawa - those are as large as "mainstream" large supermarkets.
I have to go to a larger one for a good choice of Indonesian food items, which I discovered when in Amsterdam, of course.
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Post by questa on Mar 20, 2018 1:49:35 GMT
Soy Sauce....pale or 'light' for very delicate taste
" 'light' as in reduced salt
Regular.. .kecap asin this may include the very dark one.
Sweet Soy Sauce...kecap manis dark, gooey and sweet. Add a bit to anything that needs rescue
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Post by whatagain on Mar 20, 2018 6:41:20 GMT
Got problems finding sriracha sauce. Used to find it everywhere. Either dereferenced or out of stock. Must look elsewhere.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 20, 2018 12:48:47 GMT
No problem at Paris Store or Tang Frères!
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