ChineseCookingDemystified
patreon
Patron Exclusive Recipe #14 Two Homemade Sauces for Your "Cold Dishes"
🕑 Added 2019-10-20 08:58:14 +0000 UTCSup, guys. I'm back, lol.
It's been a super crazy summer for us, going up to film in Shaoxing, then coming back looking for apartments, then getting ready to move, then settling in... Then finally getting back to a more normal schedule, nowish.
So right, we did the appetizer 101 video last week and made a garlicky sauce. This week, I wanna show you two more sauces that you can put on your cold dishes (and whatever you feel like tbh, one is a sweet and sour sesame sauce, one is a savory garlic sauce.) Now let's get started.
Sweet and Sour Sesame Sauce
**Ingredients**
This sauce is all about ratio, which is 9:9:3:1:1. I'm listing them out below:
1. Chinese dark vinegar (陈醋), 9 tbsp.
2. Honey, 9 tbsp.
3. Unseasoned toasted sesame paste, 3 tbsp.
4. Sugar, 1 tbsp.
5. Salt, 1 tbsp.
**Process**
1. Mixing the vinegar and honey.
2. Add the liquid ingredient bit by bit into the sesame paste and turn it into a smooth sauce.
Adding liquid into the paste would be much easier to loosen it up than the other way around (I often make that mistake of adding the paste into liquid and it takes forever to get to a smooth texture.)
3. Now, add in the salt and sugar, mix well.
4. Now, pop the sauce into the fridge for at least 2-3 hours before using it. Thickness is one of the characteristics of this sauce. This way, the sauce can come together and provide an almost silky texture.
5. Put it in a mason jar and it stays good for about 1 week (of course, make sure all the containers and utensils are clean and free of water when making it).
**Usage**
This sauce is very good with crunchy vegetables, a classic version is to serve it with chilled napa cabbage. I think anything with a sweetness to it would work.
I also tested it on my cold noodles, but I think it lacks a bit of "strength" on noodle dishes.
This is a very refreshing sauce, so I do think veggies are the best way to serve it with. Maybe some kinda dip too? Not sure, so please go explore~
**Garlic Sauce with Spiced Oil**
**Ingredients**
1. Garlic 100g.
2. Three Thai bird's eye chili, or heaven facing chili. (You can skip it if you can't handle the heat, but it's highly recommended. So maybe just reducing the amount to 1 or 2.)
3. Shallot, 25g.
4. The white part of the scallion, 5g.
5. Star anise, 1 piece.
6. Cinnamon stick, half a small stick, about 1 g.
7. One very small piece of bay leaf, 1 piece.
8. Salt, 1 tbsp.
9, Neutral oil, half cup.
(Note the size of the spices is very small.)
**Process**
1. Take 40g of garlic, crush and peel, give it a rough chop. Then cut the chili into 1cm sections. Toss them into a mortar, add in the 1tbsp salt, and start pounding.
2. Once it turned into a chuncky paste, put it in a clean jar.
3. Cut the shallot into big chunks, cut the scallion into 5cm sections, toss them into a small saucepan with the oil and spices.
4. Heat on low now, we're gonna fry them for a while.
5. We'll be frying this at about 100 degree Celsius, bubbling like this:
6. When the oil is frying, finely mince the rest of the 60g of garlic.
7. When the aromatics and spices are golden browned like shown below, turn off the heat so that they don't keep frying and get burned, and take them out.
8. After we take out all the aromatics, the oil temp would drop down a bit, which is what we want. now add in the garlic. Turn the heat on the lowest your stove would go, and fry them till it's lightly golden brown.
9. Turn off the heat when the garlic is very slightly golden brown like shown below, heat off. And let it cool down to room temperature.
10. When the garlic and oil are at room temp, pour it into the jar and optionally add in a 1/2 tsp of MSG for umami, mix well.
11. Now let it sit for a bit and let the flavor come together before using.
**Usage**
This is a very versatile sauce. You can top it on cold dishes (Liangcai/凉菜), noodles, rice, random things as you like. You can mix it with other seasonings like soy sauce, oyster sauce in dishes... And you can also use it as a marinade, or making barbecue stuff like the super popular and classic Chinese grilled eggplant.
Sometimes at Chinese small eateries, they'd have some homemade sauces on the table, and this kind of garlic sauce is one of them. Depends on the food they serve, the sauce can be a lot spicier than this one, lol.
One of my favorite ways of using it is smearing a thick layer on top of napa cabbage then steam it. Oh, and topping some fresh scallop with it then steam, also awesome~
Note:
1. If you're feeling fancy, toss in a few reconstituted and minced dried scallop/shrimp in with the minced garlic, fry them together, and you get an extra layer of umami.
2. Fry all the 100g of garlic and the chili in the oil if you worry about botulism. It'll lose the raw garlic kick but it can be stored longer, and you can always chop up some more fresh garlic and mix the sauce with it.
Process: finely minced all the garlic and the chili together without the salt. Then add in the salt at the end with the MSG.
3. If using raw garlic, I put it in the fridge and finish it in a day or two.
4. On seasoning: feel free to adjust the MSG level at the end by tasting it. Chris thought it’s more balanced with a bit sugar, but I think a straight up savory flavor would make it easier to use it as a ingredient in other dishes.
So you can take one tbsp out, add some sugar and taste, see if it’s up your alley, if yes, then totally add some sugar to the whole batch.
So right, hope you like these two sauces. See you guys next week.
Comments
Stephanie Li and Chris Thomas
Notes updated on October 23rd about how to fry all the garlic.
Stephanie Li and Chris Thomas
Then it can keep for at least a month or two. If you want to keep it for longer, remember to fry the chili in with the garlic as well.
How long does the garlic sauce keep if you fry all 100g of garlic?
