SC - Sweet and Savory

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

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