Showing posts with label fish sauce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fish sauce. Show all posts

January 26, 2010

Glutamate for teh win.

I love glutamate. From fish sauce, to anchovies, to MSG, glutamate is the tastiest amino acid ever. I add glutamates, in some form, to pretty much everything these days and because my wife doesn't really care for anchovies (she humors me sometimes), my glutamate delivery mechanism of choice in most cases is fish sauce.

Good quality fish sauce, like Tiparos, is a ridiculously easy way to add tons of flavor to sauces, soup, stews, braises, and savory dishes of any kind. Fish sauce adds a wonderful depth of savoriness (umami!!) to whatever you add it to, and as long as you don't over do it (whatever that means), there's no trace of fishiness at all.



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January 10, 2010

The best meatloaf ever.

Meatloaf is one of those abstract dishes that just begs for mucking around with. My own personal favorite is heavy on the fish sauce, fennel, and herbs, and is simply out of this world.

1 lb lean ground beef or turkey***
1 lb ground pork
1 fennel bulb
1 large onion, cut in half
3 cloves of garlic, minced
handful of fresh herbs, minced or 3 tbs dried herbs (anything will do,
though I'm partial to fresh italian parsley, sage, or thyme, and herbs
de provenance for dried)
1/3 cup good quality fish sauce (or to taste)
2 tbs Worcestershire or soy sauce
1-2 cups bread crumbs (or more, depending on the texture of the finished loaf)
2 eggs
salt to taste (at least a tsp or two)
pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 350

Finely dice one half of the onion, and grate the other half using the large side of a box style grater. Remove the stems/fronds from the fennel bulb, and grate per the onion above. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl and mix thoroughly with your hands. 


Onions and fennel

Add bread crumbs as needed until mixture is just barely sticky. You shouldn't need much more than a cup.

Funk loaf

Scrape in to a standard loaf pan and cover with ketchup (if desired).

Bake for 75 minutes.


You can pretty much use 2 lbs of whatever ground meat you want. I recommend pork and turkey or beef, but no reason you can't use lamb, veal, buffalo, elk, chicken, ostrich, or whatever. I say to taste for many of the ingredients because it's really up to you how flavorful / salty you want it. The more fish sauce and soy you use the less salt you need to add, but don't skimp on the seasoning.



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