SC - Sweet and Savory
lilinah at earthlink.net
lilinah at earthlink.net
Thu Sep 14 20:47:45 PDT 2000
I'm so used to cooking and eating Near Eastern, South Asian, and
Southeast Asian foods with their complex spicings and seasonings,
often blending salty, sour, sweet, and chili hot, that i think of
cinnamon more as a savory seasoning than a sweet seasoning.
In fact, i'm to the point where i often reject sweets flavored with
cinnamon, because it seems out of place to me - or perhaps it's
because the seasoning is so simplistic - the primary flavors of so
many American sweet breads and rolls are sugar and cinnamon, and i'm
used to more complex and subtle combinations.
One of my favorite snack dishes when i lived in Indonesia was Rujak.
This is a mixture of mostly crunchy fruits coated with a sauce made
of what is essentially very crunchy peanut butter, hot chilis ground
to a paste, brown sugar, and a particular kind of sticky gooey salty
shrimp paste called petis udang (not the kind you cook with which is
called trassi or blachan and which is like Thai shrimp paste). It is
not "refreshing" in an American sense, but it is stimulating in the
hot tropical afternoon. I've made this and served it to Americans who
are often a bit shocked by the mixture.
Many other dishes in Southeast Asia include combinations of pungent
salty fish sauce, rich coconut milk (which is not sweet), very hot
chilis, palm sugar, and sour lemon-lime juice (ok, this citrus fruit
doesn't exist in the US - in Indonesia it's jeruk nipis and there's a
slightly different one in Thailand, sometimes called "kaffir lime").
This sort of sauce, with the appropriate spices can be used on meats
and vegetables of various sorts - the spicing determines a great deal
- - green (hot and sour), red (hot and sour, but different seasonings),
or yellow (lots of turmeric, not highly spiced and usually not very
sour).
Additionally, avocado is treated as the fruit it is, and served in
sweet drinks in Indonesia. One of my favorites contained cubed ripe
avocado, grated young coconut (hard to find in the US - it's soft and
translucent), over ice in a tall glass of water, sweetened with rose,
vanilla, or pandan syrup. Another was very similar but instead of
young coconut it had nanka (Indonesian)/lanka (Philippino)/jackfruit
(English) which has a color and texture somewhere between papaya and
mango, but a milder flavor than either, and no rosewater.
My own barbecue sauce is a blend of
soy sauce
sherry
garlic-chili paste (consists of chilis and garlic, with a little
vinegar and salt)
brown sugar (not too much, just enough to caramelize on the meat)
a little tomato catchup (just enough to give the sauce a little body)
Soak the meat in this for however long - half a day/overnight - then
begin cooking, basting often with sauce - i've used this only on pork
ribs.
Anahita al-shazhiyya
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