Fish sauce is a liquid condiment made from fish or krill that have been coated in salt and fermented for up to two years. It is used as a staple seasoning in East Asian cuisine and Southeast Asian cuisine, particularly Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Some garum-related fish sauces have been used in the West since the Roman times.
In cooking, a sauce is a liquid, cream, or semi-solid food, served on or used in preparing other foods. Most sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, texture, and visual appeal to a dish. Sauce is a French word probably from the post-classical Latin salsa, derived from the classical salsus 'salted'. Possibly the oldest recorded European sauce is garum, the fish sauce used by the Ancient Romans, while doubanjiang, the Chinese soy bean paste is mentioned in Rites of Zhou 20.
Soy sauce is a liquid condiment of Chinese origin, traditionally made from a fermented paste of soybeans, roasted grain, brine, and Aspergillus oryzae or Aspergillus sojae molds. It is recognized for its saltiness and pronounced umami taste.
Fried rice is a dish of cooked rice that has been stir-fried in a wok or a frying pan and is usually mixed with other ingredients such as eggs, vegetables, seafood, or meat. It is often eaten by itself or as an accompaniment to another dish. Fried rice is a popular component of East Asian, Southeast Asian and certain South Asian cuisines, as well as a staple national dish of Indonesia. As a homemade dish, fried rice is typically made with ingredients left over from other dishes, leading to countless variations. Fried rice first developed during the Sui dynasty in China.
Douchi is a type of fermented and salted black soybean most popular in the cuisine of China, where they are most widely used for making black bean sauce dishes.
A dip or dip sauce is a common condiment for many types of food. Dips are used to add flavor or texture to a food, such as pita bread, dumplings, crackers, chopped raw vegetables, fruits, seafood, cubed pieces of meat and cheese, potato chips, tortilla chips, falafel, and sometimes even whole sandwiches in the case of jus. Unlike other sauces, instead of applying the sauce to the food, the food is typically placed or dipped into the sauce.
Fermented tofu is a Chinese condiment consisting of a form of processed, preserved tofu used in East Asian cuisine. The ingredients typically are soybeans, salt, rice wine and sesame oil or vinegar. In mainland China the product is often freshly distributed. In overseas Chinese communities living in Southeast Asia, commercially packaged versions are often sold in jars containing blocks 2- to 4-cm square by 1 to 2 cm thick soaked in brine with select flavorings.
Chinese Indonesian cuisine is characterized by the mixture of Chinese with local Indonesian style. Chinese Indonesians, mostly descendant of Han ethnic Hokkien and Hakka speakers, brought their legacy of Chinese cuisine, and modified some of the dishes with the addition of Indonesian ingredients, such as kecap manis, palm sugar, peanut sauce, chili, santan and local spices to form a hybrid Chinese-Indonesian cuisine. Some of the dishes and cakes share the same style as in Malaysia and Singapore, known as Nyonya cuisine by the Peranakan.
Chili sauce and chili paste are condiments prepared with chili peppers.
Peranakan cuisine or Nyonya cuisine comes from the Peranakans, descendants of early Chinese migrants who settled in Penang, Malacca, Singapore and Indonesia, inter-marrying with local Malays. In Baba Malay, a female Peranakan is known as a nonya, and a male Peranakan is known as a baba. The cuisine combines Chinese, Malay, Javanese, South Indian, and other influences.
Stir-fried water spinach is a common Asian vegetable dish, known by various names in Asian languages. Water spinach is stir-fried with a variety of vegetables, spices, and sometimes meats. It is commonly found throughout East, South and Southeast Asia; from Sichuan and Cantonese cuisine in China, to Indonesian, Burmese, Cambodian, Filipino, Malaysian, Singaporean, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese cuisine; to Sri Lankan cuisine and Bengali cuisine in South Asia.
Doubanjiang, also known as douban, toban-djan, broad bean chili sauce, or fermented chili bean paste, is a hot and savoury Chinese bean paste made from fermented broad beans, chili peppers, soybeans, salt and flour. Characteristically used in Sichuan cuisine, it has been called "the soul of Sichuan cuisine." Sichuan dishes such as mapo tofu, huoguo, yuxiang flavouring, and Shuizhu all use doubanjiang as a key ingredient. Other regions have their own versions: in Guangdong and Taiwan, for instance, the Sichuan doubanjiang is called la-doubanjiang to distinguish it from local non-spicy versions.
Hot pot or hotpot, also known as steamboat, is a dish of soup/stock kept simmering in a pot by a heat source on the table, accompanied by an array of raw meats, vegetables and soy-based foods which diners quickly cook by dip-boiling in the broth.
Hoisin sauce is a thick, fragrant sauce originating from China. It features in many Chinese cuisines, but is most prominent in Cantonese cuisine. It can be used as a glaze for meat, an addition to stir fry, or as dipping sauce. It is dark-coloured, sweet and salty. Although regional variants exist, hoisin sauce usually includes soybeans, fennel, red chili peppers, and garlic. Vinegar, five-spice powder, and sugar are also commonly added.
