Vietnamese Chili Sauce (Dip) Recipe
Recipe
Ingredients
2 dried red chilies 2 cloves garlic 1/2 tsp sugar 2 tbsp fish sauce 1 tbsp vinegar 1 tbsp lemon juice
Recipe
Preparation
Mince chilies and garlic finely and place in a mortar. Mash with the heel of a cleaver or pestle. Add sugar and stir until it dissolves. Add fish sauce, vinegar and lemon juice, stirring between each addition. This makes enough for 2 to 4 people. I almost always double the recipe just to make sure there's enough. I've kept it for long periods of time but unless you freeze it, it's past it's prime after a few days. This is a basic chili sauce used for a dip for chicken or whatever.
Variations of this are found in Cambodia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. You can fiddle with it endlessly. This is a good starting point. The proportions shown here produce what I consider a mildly warm dip. I generally use two to six times as many chilies, depending on their strength and how hot I want it.
Variations: use green serrano chilies instead of dried red ones, lime juice instead of the lemon juice or palm sugar instead of granulated. If you make it in a food processor, don't over process. It should have small chunks of each ingredient rather than being a homogeneous liquid.
The taste is sour and hot, very puckery. It's great with poached or steamed chicken, duck or game hens. Much better with basically bland dishes rather than something like curry which has it's own blend of spices. Good with Chinese white-cut chicken or Steamed Ginger Chicken with Black Bean sauce. It's truly addictive and I often serve it with meals that are not Oriental in origin. Should be good with a firm- fleshed white fish or boiled shrimp or crab.
Fish sauce is a liquid made with anchovies and salt. It's not really fishy tasting. Look for it in the oriental section of supermarkets or at markets catering to Asian clientele. Tiparos is a good brand made in the Philippines. I prefer Thai or Vietnamese fish sauce, but they'll probably be harder to find. Chinese fish sauce is NOT a substitute.
Posted by Stephen Ceideburg Dec 8 1989.
Servings:
1
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Food Tips of the Week
A few tips on healthy eating
In planning a diet, the important thing is to also endeavour to restrict your ingestion of refined carbohydrates, salt and fats.
Some lower carbohydrate diet guidlines:
* Use splenda instead of sugar.
Recipes that call for sugar can be changed to make use of splenda instead. It doesn't weigh the same so you will have to experiment a little and it might not be perfect for everything, but it does bake up nice in most cases.
* Use low carbohydrate chocolate bars for chocolate muffins.
If you have taken the time to convert your best loved chocolate chip cookie or chocolate muffins recipe using soya flour, you don’t want to add in those high carb chocolate chips. Break up a low carb chocolate bar into tiny chunks and use that in its place.
Foods containing allyl sulfides
( includes eschalot, onions and welsh onion)
The onion and garlic family of vegetables is rich in allyl sulfides, a chemical which experts believe could be linked to a reduced risk of stomach and colon cancer.
Although there is not enough, definitive proof present, allyl sulphides are also thought by many experts to reduce symptoms with colds, sterilization and insomnia.
Foods containing allyl sulfides are also low in calories, so should be a part of every diet system.
Vietnamese Chili Sauce (Dip) Recipe Index
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