Posted by Wan Yan Ling, May 19, 2008 at 11:00 AM
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read her past market missions here.
Clockwise from bottom-left: dried oysters, shrimp, seaweed, scallops, and anchovies.
Chinese eateries are often accused of being heavy-handed with monosodium glutamate (MSG)—that cheap, nasty chemical that makes food taste good but leaves hapless diners grappling with the dreaded "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome": headaches, flushing, sweating, breathlessness, heart palpitations, etc. But, since—as Jeffrey Steingarten pointed out in a 1999 essay for Vogue—not everyone in China has a headache, what do Chinese home cooks use to make their food delicious?
Naturally Umami-Filled Foods
Long before "umami"—recognized as the fifth taste after sweet, sour, salty, and bitter—became a culinary buzzword, Chinese cooks identified the presence of umami's savory "mouthfeel" in lovingly tended, double-boiled soups and slow-simmered broths. The resulting full, rounded flavor of the stocks was attributed to their base of poultry, pork, or fish bones and assorted meat scraps—a flavor that that we now know to be chock full of naturally occurring glutamates. Today, it remains the home economist’s pride to be able to coax the magnificent “meat sweetness” or umami-ness of these stocks from nothing more than humble kitchen throwaways.
But when money is no object, the ingredients most prized for their ability to deliver the desired umami punch are the briny treasures from the sea. These commonly include dried oysters, shrimp, seaweed, scallops, and anchovies.
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Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 26, 2007 at 3:45 PM
Barbara Fisher of Tigers & Strawberries put together a really useful post for people who like to cook Chinese food at home, Staple Ingredients of the Chinese Pantry, in which she discusses her favorite brands, what qualities to look for when buying a particular item and how they're generally used in cooking.
What I liked most about her list is that she gives you a short but concise summary of why each item should be a regular fixture in your kitchen. For example, we all know about soy sauce, sesame oil and dried noodles, but have you ever considered fermented black beans? They're "black soybeans which have been cooked, salted and fermented, often with slivers of ginger, and this treatment turns them into flavor powerhouses. They smell somewhat like a good aged cheese, and surprise! They are absolutely filled with natural glutamates. They make whatever they are stir fried, stewed, steamed or simmered with taste amazing. I cannot praise them highly enough."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 19, 2007 at 3:21 PM
Fuchsia Dunlop, on China’s True Dash of Flavor: "Chinese chefs talk often of “xian wei” — their term for umami. They use many ingredients that are naturally rich in it — Yunnan ham, dried scallops and shiitake mushrooms — to enhance the flavors of their stocks and sauces (just as an Italian cook might use grated Parmigiano or truffles to enhance the umami taste of a dish of pasta). They talk of “ti xian wei” (“bringing out the umami”) in their cooking through the judicious application of salt, sugar, chicken fat and, nowadays, MSG. (...) There may be no need to add MSG to a delicate soup made from chicken, ham and dried scallops. But in some culinary contexts, it works wonders: a little MSG mixed with salt and sesame oil can lift the flavor of a simple bamboo shoot salad, or add a dash of ecstasy to a stir-fry of pea shoots and garlic. If you didn’t know it was MSG, you would simply find it delicious."
(It's kind of been Fuchsia Dunlop week here at Serious Eats, as we 've taken her to lunch and gotten her to make us some General Tso's chicken. Her new book is out now: Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province.)
Previously on MSG: MSG and Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.
