I've been reading The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories, and Opinions from Public Radio's Award-Winning Food Show. There are a number of new tricks I've learned, but one's rather simple and I've been experimenting with it for a few weeks now. Add fish sauce (I use Squid Brand) to vinaigrette dressings and other things that you want to bring out the umami flavor.
Since my basic is a balsamic vinaigrette (typically 1 Tbs of Dijon mustard, 1 minced garlic clove, and then about 2:1 mix of extra virgin olive oil to balsamic), I've been adding 1-2 Tbs of fish sauce to this. It's delicious and adds another layer of complexity to the dressing. It's particularly good in a chopped salad burrito where I wrap freshly cooked black beans and either a romaine lettuce and tomato or a spinach and tomato salad dressed with this vinaigrette in a large, pan-warmed flour tortilla.
Okay, I am going to try this as the balsamic is my usual dressing too (only I have gravitated towards minced shallots instead of the garlic recently, as I was getting worried at how one-note garlic-laden my repertoire was becoming).
ReplyDelete