Some call it a condiment, but fish sauce is more of a seasoning in a sense that we use it primarily to season our food. Its main purpose is to add saltiness; and the secondary purpose, but still very important, is to add umami or savory flavor. Some brands use a "degree N" number to indicate the amount of protein in the fish sauce, for example Red Boat indicates 40°N while Megachef indicates 30°N. The higher the number, the more protein. By reading books about protagonists who have overcome challenges, we are oftentimes encouraged to do the same. The right book can motivate you to never give up and stay positive, regardless of whether it’s a romance novel or a self-help book. While you could get fish sauce in California, none tasted anywhere hear as good as the fish sauce they'd grown up with in Saigon which came from Phú Quốc, an island off Vietnam. In 2006, Cuong, was visiting Vietnam a lot on business and went to meet the owners of a fish sauce factory in Phú Quốc. This led to a deal and him eventually becoming the owner of this factory and spending many years on perfecting the making of the best ever fish sauce which is now sold and marketing as Red Boat Fish Sauce. I loved the section on the process of the making with details of finding the right anchovies, the right salt, the right combinations and timings of mixing the two and all about the importance of nitrogen levels, The best fish sauce, as exemplified by Red Boat Fish Sauce, should only contain two ingredients - anchovies and salt - had have a high nitrogen level. It is also a little like extra virgin olive oil in that the first extraction is the best and subsequent ones are of inferior quality.

You can think of it as soy sauce, but with fish! It's the main salting agent in traditional Thai cuisine, and is widely used in many Southeast Asian countries such as Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Finally, the price tag can tell you something. You can use price as a general indication of quality because the most flavourful fish sauce actually takes more fish to make, and should cost you more. While exploring this cookbook, I tested the recipe for Pasta Marinara with Herbed Bread Crumbs which was phenomenal. The extra dose of umami really makes a difference! Another day, I tested the recipe for Broccolini with Very Delicious Garlic Sauce. I needed a “very delicious” vegetable to go with our Asian-inspired dinner so this was perfect. I didn’t have broccolini so I paired it with fresh blanched green beans and OH MY LORD were they good. The green beans were the first to go so I could only photograph my small portion. I plan to test many, many more of these recipes.THAI KITCHEN. Thai Kitchen brand fish sauce is what you will likely find at non-Asian stores. Despite not having the "authentic Asian look" that others have, it is a good quality fish sauce with a lower sodium content at 1360 mg per tablespoon. I've only seen it in small bottles, so the price-per-volume is higher than others in the same tier. I mostly see this product from Vietnam and it's labeled mam nem, though there is also a Thai version called pla ra. If you're looking at a Vietnamese fish sauce, make sure it says nuoc mam or nuoc mam nhi. You can also use it as a tableside condiment, adding it to anything that feels a little bland. For this, I recommend making the most popular Thai condiment, prik nam pla, simply by combining fish sauce with chopped fresh chilies and a squeeze of lime juice. (Ratios do not need to be exact, but you can start with 3 parts fish sauce to 1 part lime juice.) Add some chopped garlic or shallots if you'd like, then treat it like you would tabasco, worcestershire sauce, or salt and pepper! But will it make my food taste fishy? When I first spent a month in Southeast Asia I fell in love with the food. The flavors were unlike anything I had ever experienced and I wanted to take home as much of that as I could. The best I could do was some dry herbs and recipes that I collected throughout my trip. I could never quite duplicate it the way it was there and attributed that to two things: it ALWAYS tastes better when someone else is cooking, even if you follow their recipe to the letter, and the ingredients at home were just not on the same level. That’s when a friend introduced me to Red Boat Fish Sauce. It was the start of my journey to getting as close to the original recipes as I could. Although I love Vietnamese food, I have to admit to not knowing about the cult status of the famed Red Boat fish sauce, but I'm glad that I do now! This cookbook is also a very effective sales strategy, as I now want to try their fish sauce as well as their salt and peppercorns. More than that, though, the cookbook is also a family history, a treatise on how fish sauce is, and should be, made, and an explanation of the importance of sustainability in production. I really appreciate a cookbook that's inclusive and strives to present a well-rounded worldview of the cuisine it discusses.

Red Boat fish sauce, I found out, is off-the-beaten-path, and even the people at our hotel, who grew up on the island, had no idea how to get there. I understood why Cuong Pham, the owner (above), said, “Best to have the taxi driver call me. I’ll tell him how to get here.” The book is mostly formulaic, with recipes of the types of recipes, stories, history and more. Not all of the recipes have pictures (which was a bit disappointing), but otherwise it was a very nice-looking, colorful cookbook. I personally associated fish sauce in savory dishes that one would eat for standard meals but it appears you can use it in desserts/sweets or even Bloody Marys, which was pretty cool to read about.I saw what he meant when we pulled into a narrow driveway, that didn’t look like it would lead to much from the street. The streets in Vietnam seem to be a jumble of everything, with different kinds of shops and restaurants, and other kinds of businesses, all mixed together. I was amazed at what kinds of businesses I randomly came across just walking around or passing on our motor scooter. The book’s overall design is fun and fitting! I love the beautiful eye-catching colours and the wonderful fonts. I do wish more of the recipes had accompanying pictures. However, the included pictures are clean and bright with wonderfully simple staging that effectively highlights the gorgeous food.

When I realized we were going to Vietnam, I decided not to start making lists of places to go or things to eat, like I often do. (I’m learning to say “Yes” to less-scheduled vacations.) Fortunately, a friend who lives with her family in Ho Chi Minh City planned almost our entire trip for us, and I was happy to relinquish the role to her. Books are always filled with fun and interesting facts. Whether you read fiction or non-fictions, books have the ability to provide us with information we would’ve otherwise not known. Reading a variety of topics can make you a more knowledgeable person, in turn improving your conversation skills.

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But, I wish the book was organized a little more comprehensively. I also would have liked to see more variation in the dessert and drink offerings. Anyone who knows the importance of fish sauce in their Vietnamese and Thai dishes, will want a copy of this book. Highly recommended. The book is very much geared to the US market in the use of food language and ingredients such as tapioca flour, baking soda, cilantro, kosher salt, zucchini, eggplant and scallion. Most are quite widely known in the UK though and easily found/understood if not immediately obvious. Less hard to know what they are or to source are things like perilla, rau ram, taro, wood ear mushrooms, bitter melons and morning glory (rau muong) - or so I thought until I popped into a local Asian specialist food store the other day and found bitter melons and morning glory. How exciting - my repertoire of recipes I can try from this book has now increased and I look forward to using the book a lot. Now that you know everything there is to know about this essential Thai sauce, time to get into the kitchen and cook with it. This list of easy Thai dishes is a great place to start. Fish sauce won't "spoil" however, because there's so much salt in there, no bacteria can grow; it just won't taste good if it's "old".