[Sca-cooks] Maybe OOP - Chinese Brown Sauce

[Craig Jones]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sca-cooks-bounces+drakey=webone.com.au at ansteorra.org
[mailto:sca-
> cooks-bounces+drakey=webone.com.au at ansteorra.org] On Behalf Of Phil
Troy /
> G. Tacitus Adamantius
> Sent: Tuesday, 22 March 2005 2:17 PM
> To: Cooks within the SCA
> Subject: RE: [Sca-cooks] Maybe OOP - Chinese Brown Sauce
> 
> Also sprach Craig Jones:
> >Alright... While you're there Mr. Smarty Pants...
> >
> >I doing the Broiled Chicken recipe for ASFTQ this weekend.  It uses
> >'bean sauce'.  What would you use there?
> 
> Probably [warning: Mandarin alert, and I don't even pretend to try to
> speak it] Yuan Shai Chi (whole brown bean paste -- brown bean paste
> with whole beans) or Mo Yuan Chi (same thing, only ground up,
> homogeneous brown bean paste). The Cantonese name would be more like
> Men See.

That's good.  I 99.9% sure what I have is a wheat-free Mo Yuan Chi (we
have a Caeliac in the campsite). 
 
> There's also a rather remote (to my mind) possibility that it could
> also be something akin to red bean curd cheese (this started life as
> bean curd, drained, cut into cubes, and fermented in a brine until it
> starts to break down to a sort of Camembert consistency and flavor).
> I forget what the red kind is called, but the Cantonese call the
> white kind Foo Yi or Foo Ngoy. It gets confusing because you can get
> the white foo ngoy bean paste with chili flakes or without, but even
> with the red chili flakes, it's still white bean curd cheese -- red
> bean curd cheese has some kind of red mold culture added to it, I
> think, that makes it a rather deep, brick red. I mention this because
> they do figure in roast and barbecued meats. Southerners tend to
> prefer the white stuff over the red.

I know the stuff... I've eaten it along with Tempeh and all sorts or
other weird Asian fermented stuff...
 
> On the other hand, given that ASFTQ gives a recipe for soy sauce that
> produces an end result very much like brown bean paste, we can be
> reasonably sure it's a flavor Yuan Dynasty people would have been
> familiar with, and it does go well with meats of all kinds. I'd go
> with brown bean paste until someone showed me the error of my ways...
> 
> >Drakey - off to Rowany Festival this weekend, and a campsite of
> >pseudo-mongols.
> >
> >Ps.  My Mung Bean Wine came out great.  Much better than expected.
Like
> >a strong traditional gruit Ale with a fruit back taste (from the Musk
> >Melon) and quite hot/peppery from the Smartweed.  Very interesting
> >indeed...
> 
> Very, very cool! Maybe you'd be willing to send your adapted recipe
> with quantities, either to the list or privately? It sounds like
> something I should bring to my friend Ateno's house... he's had
> several years to recover from our various Ox bone wine debacles...

Would be happy to.  Can you remind me next week as I have 6 more hours
of packing to do, then 8hrs sleep then a 15 hour drive... And no more
time for email...

I do cheat on the Mung Bean Wine.  I have changed the leaven recipe to a
brew recipe and I add light malt as mung beans have no/little diastatic
potential. 

Drakey.