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Books are always filled with fun and interesting facts. Whether you read fiction or non-fictions, books have the ability to provide us with information we would’ve otherwise not known. Reading a variety of topics can make you a more knowledgeable person, in turn improving your conversation skills. Another indicator of quality is protein content. As I explained in How is Fish Sauce Made above, lower quality fish sauce has more water added, and this naturally dilutes the concentration of fish protein. You can see from the jar on the left, below, what the anchovies and salt look like after they’ve been marinating in salt for a short time. Most of the ingredients are fairly accessible and moderately inexpensive. Essential pantry staples include pork, shrimp, lemongrass, coconut cream, and coconut milk. However, many of the recipes are time and labour intensive and also require lots of ingredients. Therefore, this book is more suited for readers with some kitchen experience.
Other recipes in the cookbook looked delicious: Seafood Chowder, Pineapple Catfish Soup, and Walnut Pesto with Shrimp to just mention three. I loved this cookbook as much for the human story as for the recipes. Author Cuong Pham's tale of his escape from war torn Vietnam in 1979 and arriving in the United States nine months later, aged just twenty, is absolutely gripping. He took a degree and then got a job with Steve Jobs at a small computer company called Apple. This section of his story is surely worth an entire book in it's own right as his five siblings and other family members were also escaping from Vietnam to join him at this time, with their mother only able to join them in 1990. Fish sauce won't "spoil" however, because there's so much salt in there, no bacteria can grow; it just won't taste good if it's "old".I have been a fan of fish sauce for years, ever since my first taste, and always have a bottle of Red Boat Fish Sauce in my pantry being a firm believer that everything is better with fish sauce. When I saw that a cookbook from Red Boat was coming out I knew I had to have it! This cookbook was more than I even imagined. The history of Red Boat was very interesting! Its founder, Cuong Pham, a Vietnamese refugee found himself working for Apple in the early days of Steve Jobs but couldn't forget the flavors of his childhood. He realized that Vietnamese food in the US didn't taste right because the fish sauce wasn't right. He became committed to discovering what made premium authentic fish sauce and invested in a small company in Vietnam. Shortly there after the company told him they wanted out and left him with the company which he parlayed into the number one name in fish sauce.
THAI KITCHEN. Thai Kitchen brand fish sauce is what you will likely find at non-Asian stores. Despite not having the "authentic Asian look" that others have, it is a good quality fish sauce with a lower sodium content at 1360 mg per tablespoon. I've only seen it in small bottles, so the price-per-volume is higher than others in the same tier.
No. If that were true, most Thai dishes would taste fishy. I have received many messages from first timers who smell it, then immediately cannot imagine how this could be added to food. I've even had someone asking me if it had gone bad!
Finally, the price tag can tell you something. You can use price as a general indication of quality because the most flavourful fish sauce actually takes more fish to make, and should cost you more. You wouldn't expect a condiment made of anchovies to gain cult status—but that's exactly what Red Boat Fish Sauce did, earning praise from food titans like David Chang, Andrea Nguyen, and Ruth Reichl. But what's even more incredible is the story behind its success and founder, Cuong Pham. After a year-long journey to America from Vietnam after the war, he found himself working for Steve Jobs at Apple in 1984. But, all the while, he missed the tastes of his childhood—what the grocery store had just wasn't it—and set out to find what he and his family remembered so acutely.Although I love Vietnamese food, I have to admit to not knowing about the cult status of the famed Red Boat fish sauce, but I'm glad that I do now! This cookbook is also a very effective sales strategy, as I now want to try their fish sauce as well as their salt and peppercorns. More than that, though, the cookbook is also a family history, a treatise on how fish sauce is, and should be, made, and an explanation of the importance of sustainability in production. I really appreciate a cookbook that's inclusive and strives to present a well-rounded worldview of the cuisine it discusses. Good news: there aren't a whole bunch of different types of fish sauce to choose from, unlike soy sauce where dark soy, light soy, sweet soy sauces and more can trip you up. There is mainly just one type (yes, "mainly." See which to avoid below). Basically, fish sauce is the liquid that results from the fermentation of small fish (most commonly anchovies) and salt. The process is rather simple: put a bunch of anchovies and salt together in a big tank and let it do its natural thing. Megachef is fermented for 2 years, which I believe is longer than many others. The saltiness feels a little less jarring than Squid, so this is a good choice if you want to use it as a tableside condiment.
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