Do you use fish sauce when you cook? It's an Asian condiment that brings a salty, fermented quality to a dish. You've probably had it in Pad Thai or another dish in a restaurant somewhere and you may not have even noticed it. Something salty? A little bit of pleasant funk? Fish sauce. Now, even before I stopped eating meat, I never cared for or ate fish, and there's a long story to go along with that--but I won't bore you with it at the moment. Suffice it to say, my maternal grandfather had an odd sense of humor.
Back to the sauce. After over fifteen years of cooking without meat, I've become pretty adept at adapting anything to be meatless. It isnt that hard, but there are certain condiments, like fish sauce, that remain out of reach. Occasially, if you're shopping during the right season and in a good store, you can find a bottle of vegetarian fish sauce at the Vietnamese market (labeled chay), but those are few and far between. And there ain't no Vietnamese market in Midland--that I know of anyway! Which is why I was excited to discover a recipe for a fishless fish sauce in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, right on my bookshelf. It is simple and adds that certain j'en sais quoi to my dishes. I'm using it this week to make my Spicy Edamame...
Recipe: Fishless Fish Sauce
1 tbsp. dulse (a form of seaweed), crumbled
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablspoon Tamari or soy sauce
3 tablespoon water
4 limes
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
Whisk the dulce, garlic, soy sauce and water together in a small bowl. Grate the zest of two of the limes into the bowl, then juice all four limes into the mixture. Add the brown sugar, then whisk until dissolved. Decant into a small jar and let the flavors meld. Keeps for a how long? I would say a while. And that, my friends, is vegetarian fish sauce.