Nothing Fishy

 

I am committing myself to making more delicious Asian-inspired foods this winter.  I love the care that goes into making beautiful Japanese food.  I love the flavors of Korean and Vietnamese and Thai food.  To get myself started, I looked for a recipe on the web for vegetarian fish sauce.  There are quite a few!  As far as I can tell, fish sauce serves to add salt and umami complexity to recipes.  Most of the time, when I see fish sauce in a recipe, I just add extra tamari.  We'll see what happens when I add my special phish sauce to Veggie Pho, and all the curries and soups I plan on making this winter.

Fysh sauce?  It tastes gingery and sour and sweet and salty all at once.  My first use of the fish sauce is in a big batch of vegetarian kim chi I am fermenting in the fridge.  I'll let you know how it turns out in a couple of weeks!

Vegan Fish Sauce

Based on Ms. Nadja Dee Witherbee's recipe

Takes 1 hour

Makes 1 3/4 cups of sauce

2 cups wakame seaweed, broken up (I think I would use kombu next time)

3 dried shitake mushrooms

4 cups water

4 cloves garlic, smashed

1 1/2 TBSP black peppercorns

1/2 cup tamari

2 tsp. lime juice

2 tsp. lemon juice

2 TBSP rice wine vinegar

3 tsp. palm sugar

1 tsp. fresh grated ginger

1/4 tsp. chili powder

In a large pot, bring seaweed, mushrooms, and water to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.  Add remaining ingredients, bring to a simmer again, and cook for 30 minutes.

Let cool.  Strain into a clean bottle.  Store in the fridge, for up to 1 month.

Your house will smell intense while this is cooking!  Moste Potente!

Let me know if you have a good name to call this stinky sauce by!

Lemon rasam

I can't believe I've never posted a recipe for rasam.  It is one of my favorite foods, eaten every day in Tamil Nadu, where my family is from, and now I eat it at least once a week.  There are many different varieties: thakkali rasam, made with tomatoes and tamarind and the most basic; garlic rasam; jeera rasam, made with cumin; milagu rasam, made with lots of black pepper; and some people even make pineapple rasam!  I'm not into it, I have to say.

My favorite is lemon rasam, made with limes, but in my family always called lemon. In India the lemons are small and yellow, kind of like key limes, but in America, we buy limes for rasam.  This rasam is very light, but when well made, it has a perfect balance of salty, sour and spicy.

Now I remember why I have never written a recipe for rasam: no matter how determined I am in the beginning of cooking to keep track of what I am doing, I always forget in the final stages when I add a little more salt, and then a little more sambhar powder. This recipe is a guideline, but you will have to trust your tastebuds to get the flavor just right.  Good luck!  It's worth it.

Lemon Rasam

Makes 2/3 servings

Takes busy 30 minutes

1/2 cup toor dal

2 medium tomatoes, cut into eighths

4 1/2 cups water

2 dashes asafetida

1 1/2 teaspoons sambhar powder

2 teaspoons salt

12 curry leaves (one sprig)

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

big handful cilantro, washed and chopped

1 lime, halved

On high heat, bring toor dal and 2 cups of water to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer, cover and let cook until lentils are done, about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a pot, bring to a boil tomatoes, water, asafetida, sambhar powder, salt, and curry leaves.  When it boils, turn it down a little, and let boil until it has reduced a bit and the tomatoes are cooked, about 15 minutes.  You will have to taste it: it should taste both spicy and salty, but not too much of either.  You might need to put in more sambhar powder, then it might need more salt.  When it tastes balanced to you--the right amount of salty and the right amount of spicy but not too much of either--then it's done.

In a little pan, heat oil on high.  When the oil is hot, put the mustard seeds in the pan, and when they pop, take off heat and pour into rasam.  

When the lentils are cooked, drain if necessary, and pour into rasam.  Squeeze one lime half into the rasam.  Taste.  Maybe it will need more lime, squeeze another half in.  Taste it again.  Good?

Then you are done!  Top with cilantro.  Rasam is good on its own, or you can eat it with rice and vegetable curries.  My favorite combos are lemon rasam and Green Beans Parappusili, or Spinach and carrot salad!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.  It's been a busy summer!  More soon.