Used in Thailand as nam pla and Myanmar as ngan bya yay, as well as Laos, Cambodia, and the Philippines under other local names and variations, one thing is certain regardless of preference: fish sauce plays a crucial role in flavouring food in Southeast Asia. Its lingering smell leaves no mystery about its strong, fishy contents. In my travels, I’ve heard others cite fish sauce as one of those tastes that takes some getting used to for Western palates, along with stinky tofu and durian fruit, and the bright purple fermented shrimp paste that accompanies Vietnamese bun rieu soup. While we travel for the people and the culture, for the stories and the food, we sometimes take the origins of individual ingredients, like fish sauce or chili peppers, for granted.What about Asia’s modern day fish sauce? Is it the same as Roman garum?.Fish sauce packets, ready to be consumed. Each symmetrical package took only three seconds to make, and then waited to be added to a takeaway meal. Nuoc cham, or pure fish sauce, nuoc mam, accompanies many Southern Vietnamese dishes, and fish sauce is consumed by 95% of Vietnamese households.īut his motions – pouring the fishy liquid into tiny plastic bags, delicately deploying slender sliced carrots into the mix, and then elegantly curling his wrist for three turns of an elastic band – were mesmerizing. What he was doing happens all over the city at street stalls and restaurants. He was also adding thin slivers of pickled carrots to the tiny bags that piled in front of him. It was only when I was directly in front of the Saigon street stall that I realized what was unfolding: the owner, a smiling man in his 40s who always greeted me as I walked by, was packaging nuoc cham, a condiment made from fish sauce, water, lime juice, and sugar. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something twisting and turning, rhythmic and precise.
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