Fish Sauce, What The Bleep Is It Really?
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Fish Sauce, you may have heard of it, use it in cooking, or cringe when you hear the words, but do you really know what it is and how it is made? Our ingredient spotlight today will shed light on all things fish sauce, including: ingredients, what makes it special as a flavor, and how to know when to toss an old bottle.
Ingredient wise, it all boils down to the country of origin. Fish sauce is a principal cooking ingredient for curries, sauces, pastes and condiments in Thai, Vietnamese, Filipino, and several other Southeast Asian countries. It always includes some type of fermented fish, but the type of fish varies, as well as the ingredients and spices added to it. In general, most fish sauces are made of three simple ingredients: fish, water, and salt. Anchovies are the most common fish used in fish sauce.
Now we’re going to get Alton Brown style geeky with you. Fish sauce, as well as aged cheeses and meats contain glutamates, the salts of the amino acid glutamic acid. Glutamates are flavor enhancers, and are the essential component of the hard to describe savory flavor known as Umami. So there is a scientific reason why fish sauce tastes good!
So, what brand of fish sauce is best? Of course that all depends on your personal tastes. Chef Ming Tsai recommends the Three Crabs brand, and Chowhounders here discuss several favorites, including: Golden Boy and Tra Chang from Thailand, and Colatura di Alici from the Amalfi Coast of Italy.
Does it go bad? Listen, everything goes bad eventually, everything! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Watch this video from Chow featuring Chef and Asian food expert Corinne Trang as she explains when it’s time to toss the sauce.
Cremini Mushrooms Stuffed With A Caper And Crab Salad
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©Modern Luxury Magazine
Chef William Bradley is the executive chef of Addison, the signature restaurant of the The Grand Del Mar resort in San Diego. Here’s some recent praise for the chef from Troy Johnson of Modern Luxury Magazine:
“Paging Bravo! William Bradley’s time in the lights is now. He recently became the only Southern California chef to be anointed with both the AAA Five-Diamond Award and the Mobil Five-Star Award for his contributions to the mouth. The brainy charmer’s kitchen at the San Diego-based Grand Del Mar’s Addison restaurant is a sanctuary—not a single knife or shallot out of place. This obsessive attention to detail shows in his food, as well: think clean, perfectly separated tastes of wild leek vichyssoise with bacon crémeux, brioche and fennel pollen.”
In today’s featured restaurant recipe, the chef shares a simple to prepare yet elegant appetizer featuring stuffed cremini mushrooms. And did you know? Cremini mushrooms are nutrient packed, trumping all other mushrooms and many vegetables in levels of copper, potassium, Vitamin B2 (riboflavin), and the antioxidant selenium. You can view the comparisons in a chart from the Mushroom Council here.
Marinated Cremini Mushrooms Stuffed With A Caper and Crab Salad
Chef William Bradley
4 servings
Ingredients
16 cremini mushrooms
To taste Fleur de Sel sea salt
3 cups extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves
4 whole shallots, sliced
2 cups picked Dungeness crabmeat
½ cup mayonnaise
½ cup chopped chives
½ cup chopped capers
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Directions
Method for Marinated Creminis:
Place cremini mushrooms on a roasting tray, sprinkle with sea salt. Place in a preheated 350-degree Fahrenheit oven for 15 minutes. Remove mushrooms and rest for an additional 15 minutes. In a mixing bowl, add olive oil, garlic, shallots and mushrooms. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 48 hours.
Method for Caper Crab Salad:
In a mixing bowl, add crab, mayonnaise, chives, capers and lemon juice. Make sure all ingredients are mixed thoroughly.
Assembly:
Remove mushrooms from marinade. Divide mushrooms among 4 plates and place a generous amount of crab mixture on top of the mushrooms.
After meeting Chef José Andrés in Aspen, and attending several of his cooking demos, we were a bit surprised at his liberal use of canned foods. We saw him whip out the can opener several times, for tuna, artichokes, and beans. Later we were told that this is fairly common practice in Spanish cuisine, and José raises a good point: “We put things (ingredients) in cans when they are at the peak of their flavor”. It’s very nice to know that even professional celebrity chefs take shortcuts!
In this video from MSNBC, Chef Andres shares 3 recipes using canned ingredients, a White Asparagus Gazpacho, Chickpea and Tuna Salad, and Artichokes with Clams and Jamon Serrano, a dry-cured Spanish ham.
PS: We asked the chef what the best or his favorite brand of canned tuna was, and he said that he always uses Bonito Del Norte tuna packed in Spanish olive oil. For garbanzo beans, aka chickpeas, he prefers the Goya Brand.
Read on for the recipes Read More→
