In the early 2000s, post-dotcom-crash I worked at small consultancy for the airlines industry that had a software wing. I think I made $11/hour slinging PHP code. They had sequestered the engineers, (half a dozen of us, all young) in the back of a large print shop (the consultancy specialized in manuals) and we had our own kitchen back there, so we sometimes cooked together.
One of my coworkers was married to a Laotian woman and as such married into a large Laotian community. One day we went to the Asian supermarket and we bought all the stuff to make green papaya salad and larb. He brought three specific things from home for this: a weird aluminum cauldron, a bamboo basket to put on it (to make sticky rice) and a repurposed instant coffee bottle full of the strangest looking sludge. It looked kind of like peering into a chewing tobacco spit bottle. This was a bottle of homemade padaek[1] and he said it was like liquid gold in the community he lived in. It was foul as hell to smell but we did a taste test of the papaya salad before and after mixing it in and sure enough it was so much better with the padaek. It was an eye opening experience and since then I've always had a fish sauce bottle in my fridge. I even use a little of it in things like spaghetti sauce.
Anyway if you have a chance to get your hands on a little homemade padaek, definitely do it. Would kill for some, myself. Also, share new foods with friends if they are open to it. I am very fond of that memory. I had never been exposed to those dishes before and even that small experience broadened my world in a simple, but meaningful way.
Sounds like what they call "bla ra" in Thailand (Northeastern Thailand has a lot of Laotian influence). Thick/chunky, unlike the more refined "fish sauce" - "nam bla".
Lived in a house for a while with neighbors making it - slow fermenting pots of fish. Not a pleasant olfactory experience.
I bought a bottle of Vietnamese fish sauce (Red Boat brand, the most recommended brand) and added a teaspoon to some pea leaves. I loved the resulting flavor, but my partner did not and complained that it had too much of a fishy smell. A lot of cooking techniques actually seek to remove this fishy smell even when cooking fish, so it was not welcome to add this to something that didn’t contain fish in the first place. It’s certainly not a flavor everyone would like.
I use anchovy fillets in alot of recipes to add umami and nutrients, not just sauces but also things like meatloaf. Fishiness dissipates pretty quickly with heat, even faster with acidic ingredients like tomatoes, citrus, or vinegar. It's pretty easy to modulate fishiness, even with just acid. I double or triple the anchovies in a typical caesar dressing recipe, and if I feel I over did it just adding more lemon juice tamps it down.
One of my kids is pretty picky, even sensitive to onions, but doesn't seem to pick up on the anchovies. She'll eat fish, though, depending on mood, so maybe she's not the best benchmark.
Fish sauce is not supposed to be added to the point that you can taste the fishy taste, you do get that right? If you’ve added enough to impart fishy taste, you’ve added way too much.
Not quite true. Lots of Thai dishes use a tonne of fish sauce and even shrimp paste in their dishes. They even make side dish dipping sauce (Nam Jim Jaew) that's like basically 50% fish sauce.
No, people have different sensitivity to it. Many people experience Vietnamese fish sauce as a strong “rancid fish” character that is not at all subtle in all traditional recipes that use it. It isn’t “using too much”, it is “using any at all”.
I imagine it is like the people who are sensitive to cilantro, thinking it tastes like soap.
So the West still does have a fish sauce in common use, although one that's not nearly as strong as the eastern variants. Worcestershire sauce was an attempt to recreate an Indian fish sauce, and to this day contains anchovies.
Wow, Legalnomads! Happy to see her pop up here. Way back in the day when I used to backpack and freelance she had a very big online presence in the internet hustler community. I just read through her recent history and I'm sad for her recent health issues, but glad she's still pushing through.
My high school Latin classmates and I made garum and left it to ferment in my back yard for a month. Young and foolish as we were, we stored it in a plastic Tupperware container. The day I brought it back to school for the class tasting, I had it sitting on a stack of piano books in the passenger seat of my car.
Weeks later, the rotted fish stench just wouldn't fade from my book of Beethoven sonatas. I ended up throwing it away.
Oh absolutely and you're welcome! Btw, fish sauce in scrambled eggs over rice is one of the simplest, most satisfying meals you'll find across Southeast Asia, in my country Vietnam especially. It's my favorite meal also.
At least in the US, fish in general is somewhat polarizing and, probably especially, strong tasting fish like anchovies, fish sauce, etc. Just not something probably the majority of people grew up with.
It isn’t just familiarity. Some people experience some fish sauces as having vividly foul flavor. This includes people who routinely eat anchovies, cured fish, etc.
Yeah. Technically I suppose you could describe it as a fish sauce but definitely more on the umami and vinegar side. I'm also not sure the degree to which Worcestershire Sauce is especially a mainstream American condiment. I have a jar in my cupboard. Not sure how many houses do.
On that note, the easiest way to get your hands on some protease is to buy digestive enzymes sold as food supplements (most often they're made out of dried pork pancreas).
You also don't need much equipment: scales and an immersion circulator should do the trick.
The video claims the smell is not "entirely unpleasant" but that's a lie. It is the most disgusting smell I have ever encountered. And I used to have to shovel manure and clean chicken coops growing up. Once I even had to dig a dead racoon out of the guts of a square baler after it got run over and jammed up the machinery and then sat for a few days in the summer heat. Garum smells worse.
One of my coworkers was married to a Laotian woman and as such married into a large Laotian community. One day we went to the Asian supermarket and we bought all the stuff to make green papaya salad and larb. He brought three specific things from home for this: a weird aluminum cauldron, a bamboo basket to put on it (to make sticky rice) and a repurposed instant coffee bottle full of the strangest looking sludge. It looked kind of like peering into a chewing tobacco spit bottle. This was a bottle of homemade padaek[1] and he said it was like liquid gold in the community he lived in. It was foul as hell to smell but we did a taste test of the papaya salad before and after mixing it in and sure enough it was so much better with the padaek. It was an eye opening experience and since then I've always had a fish sauce bottle in my fridge. I even use a little of it in things like spaghetti sauce.
Anyway if you have a chance to get your hands on a little homemade padaek, definitely do it. Would kill for some, myself. Also, share new foods with friends if they are open to it. I am very fond of that memory. I had never been exposed to those dishes before and even that small experience broadened my world in a simple, but meaningful way.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padaek
Lived in a house for a while with neighbors making it - slow fermenting pots of fish. Not a pleasant olfactory experience.
It's pretty simple to make.
One of my kids is pretty picky, even sensitive to onions, but doesn't seem to pick up on the anchovies. She'll eat fish, though, depending on mood, so maybe she's not the best benchmark.
I imagine it is like the people who are sensitive to cilantro, thinking it tastes like soap.
Weeks later, the rotted fish stench just wouldn't fade from my book of Beethoven sonatas. I ended up throwing it away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q5QhGnEKUM
Addendum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvF2m57_Usg
One thing I am “stealing” from SEA is fish sauce in scrambled eggs. Feels almost like a cheat code.
A bit of stone ground mustard added to scrambled eggs is another culinary delight.
It depends on your risk tolerance to try I suppose. It will either be a delicious variant or create a space-time singularity dooming us all...
:-D
It is clearly an issue of sensitivity.
You don’t use much when you use it but I somehow go through a bottle every couple years.
I highly recommend avoiding going anywhere near them.
You also don't need much equipment: scales and an immersion circulator should do the trick.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/R1Hq3WEqVeI
The video claims the smell is not "entirely unpleasant" but that's a lie. It is the most disgusting smell I have ever encountered. And I used to have to shovel manure and clean chicken coops growing up. Once I even had to dig a dead racoon out of the guts of a square baler after it got run over and jammed up the machinery and then sat for a few days in the summer heat. Garum smells worse.