something's fishy...

fish sauce. my aptmate has a mini Cock brand bottle of fish sauce (24 fl OZ flying lion brand bottle is mine. richer and less salty--cock brand sucks). The label has a seal of a rooster on it and there are squid, pompano, shrimp, and crab pictured. None present in the sauce itself, which is an extract of salt, fermented anchovies, and water. Traditionally, fish sauce is made in barrels in which layers of fish and salt are alternated, and allowed to sit around and ferment until you get this glorious salty savory brown juice. It's actually not fishy tasting and complements pork. I've seen it used watered down and mixed with other liquids as a dip, a marinade, in stews, and with braised vegetables. There's probably plenty more uses for it that I don't know about. It's more of a south asian (esp. viet and thai) sauce. on an interesting historical note, the ancient Romans also used a fermented fish sauce called "garum" which was even mixed with wine. the vietnamese name is nuoc mam. i call it yu low in cantonese. but chinese are more likely to eat and cook salted dried fish 鹹魚 than use fish sauce 魚露 jyu4 lou6 , i think. "salty fish and diced chicken fried rice" is a popular and very tasty fried rice typically found in cantonese restauraunts. it's one of my favorites. this menu for the canteen at The Chinese University of Hong Kong has a couple of dishes that use the flavorful stuff. i think dried fish is seen as a slightly lower class type of food, but some salty dried fish (whole or fillets) can be quite expensive--i've seen some selling for 30 dollars a fish!

fried egg, rice. to the right is something i was playing around with that actually turned out decent. it's canned squid sliced up and cooked up with yellow crookneck and italian squash, and bamboo shoots in a saltyish shrimp paste (it might be made with brine shrimp... which i once owned in the form of Sea Monkeys) and garlic sauce. i was thinking of those stewed seafood and vegetable dishes in flip cuisine.

realizing that the cholesterol from squid and eggs were going to do me in, i wanted to make something that wasn't so killer and discovered a burning craving for teriyaki. i'm so lame, i only wanted the sauce, but not that lame.. so there's a pitiful stirfried onion to make it a little less sad.

i was really hungry when i got home last week so i started making a fried egg... which wasn't enough, so then i fried up some rice with soy sauce, minced garlic, and chili garlic sauce... which seemed kind of ghetto, so i sliced up some chinese dried sausages and threw those in too.. but it seemed lacking so i mixed in an egg... but it needed finishing touches so i sliced in some green onions... and then remembered i had some leftover squid... then decided it needed a bit of crunchy shallots to top and.. well, i got this strange looking fried rice.

somehow, there weren't enough food groups present, so i stirfried a bunch of celery in a thai basil chili garlic sauce.