Oriental Pantry Ingredients

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

I love Spains fresh produce but I struggle with being deprived of some ingredients when I'm here, and the vast majority are Asian.
What asian cooking ingredients do you consider essential to keep in stock?

Panniers have a limited capacity but I need my fix so space will be made for the essentials!
Things like fresh chilli, garlic and ginger are easy to find but the liquid ingredients (including pastes etc) are the most important first part of the 'Things I miss' list as I can't take them on a plane and only catch a ferry here once a year.

I can get -
Sesame oil
Rice vinegar
Sweet chilli

What are your must haves and what's missing from my list?

Wet ingredients
Fish sauce
Oyster sauce
Hoisin Sauce
Shaoxing rice wine
Gochujang
Black vinegar
Sambal

Dry ingredients
Fermented black beans
Chinese five spice
Star anise
Lemongrass
Chilli flakes
White pepper
Golden lily
Dried mushrooms wood ear, shiitake etc
Dashi powder
Curry leaves

 

[TastyReuben]

The only thing I have/had that’s not on your list is mirin.

I cook so few Asian-inspired dishes that when I do, I usually have to go out and restock from the ground up: “Oh let’s see…well, this is six years past its date…”

I’m making a stir fry sometime this coming week, and I had to do just that.

 

[badjak]

I'm missing soy sauce and sweet soy (ketjap/kecap).

More sambal...
I would take sambal oelek, brandal & badjak with me. Plus melindjo paste.
Maybe szechuan pepper

I find hoisin sauce to sweet, hardly ever use it. Same for sweet chili sauce
Not fond of star anise and 5 spice powder.

I like Gochujang and black vinegar but wouldn't consider them essential

Since you are going to spain, use dry sherry instead of shaoxin rice wine

 

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

I'm missing soy sauce and sweet soy (ketjap/kecap).

More sambal...
I would take sambal oelek, brandal & badjak with me. Plus melindjo paste.
Maybe szechuan pepper

I find hoisin sauce to sweet, hardly ever use it. Same for sweet chili sauce
Not fond of star anise and 5 spice powder.

I like Gochujang and black vinegar but wouldn't consider them essential

Since you are going to spain, use dry sherry instead of shaoxin rice wine

Sambal is on my list although it's not one I use a huge amount. I think of Sambal as Sambal Oelek, I don't know anything about the others?

If I'm being honest Thai taste pastes would be on the list, not as good as making your own but a handy shortcut if I want a quick soup.

Forgot to mention soy sauce as I seem to be able to get that easily in most supermarkets here, even the gluten free versions.
Agree on hoisin is it too sweet but I rarely use it on its own, usually a tsp or tbsp as the sugar element to sweeten things.

Can't believe I missed of Szechuan pepper it's the first thing I thought of, thanks for the memory jog.
I do currently use sherry and balsamic as subs but the results don't quite hit the mark.
As for the five spice I think a lot of them are awful blends with lots of salt and sugar but there are some (Bart would be a well known one in the UK) that do a great job that are just the spices and I definitely miss that.

 

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

The only thing I have/had that’s not on your list is mirin.

I cook so few Asian-inspired dishes that when I do, I usually have to go out and restock from the ground up: “Oh let’s see…well, this is six years past its date…”

I’m making a stir fry sometime this coming week, and I had to do just that.

Asian foods (hate the term given that it's such a diverse cuisine but that's how we know them) are up there as my favourite type of food to cook. They'll be at least one, usually more Asian dish on the menu every week.

It really floats my boat. What's goes in your classic stir fry?

 

[vernplum]

Love it or hate it:

MSG.

 

[vernplum]

I think your list is quite good. badjak beat me to it on Soy Sauce - different kinds, light, dark.

For dry ingredients I'd include things like dried small shrimps (from tiny krill-like ones to ones about the size of a 5 pence piece), scallops, anchovy (ikan bilis) which are variously used in soups, stocks and stir fries.

Also cornflour, potato starch. Coconut milk. Chicken powder.

Also, I keep a variety of different chili products around from condiment sauces to these kinds of more 'raw' offerings as ingredients:

 

[The Velvet Curtain]

I always have in Sambal Nasi Goreng, and Katsu curry paste

 

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

Love it or hate it:

MSG.

Funnily enough for the first time a couple of days ago I ordered some!

 

[vernplum]

Funnily enough for the first time a couple of days ago I ordered some!

Makes a big difference if you're making fried rice and want it to taste like a restaurant/takeaway!

 

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

I think your list is quite good. badjak beat me to it on Soy Sauce - different kinds, light, dark.

For dry ingredients I'd include things like dried small shrimps (from tiny krill-like ones to ones about the size of a 5 pence piece), scallops, anchovy (ikan bilis) which are variously used in soups, stocks and stir fries.

Also cornflour, potato starch. Coconut milk. Chicken powder.

Also, I keep a variety of different chili products around from condiment sauces to these kinds of more 'raw' offerings as ingredients:

View attachment 127486

Soy sauce is available in every supermarket here which find strange considering there's usually no other asian ingredients on offer (apart from sometimes coconut milk).
I found sesame oil and rice vinegar in a grotty little supermarket/bizarre run by some Chinese folk so I'm happy about that.
Potato starch, cornflour and coconut milk I can also get in the supermarket. Don't know anything much about chicken power

I thought about dried shrimps, scallops and anchovies but I think thats where my repertoire falls down, I don't really know how to use them for best effect and often think I'd be better off with the fresh version.

Could do with some suggestions or recipes using the dried proteins, they'd likely be brilliant pannier kitchen food.

 

[TastyReuben]

Asian foods (hate the term given that it's such a diverse cuisine but that's how we know them) are up there as my favourite type of food to cook.

The funny thing is, if you look at the more Indian side of things, MrsT hates that stuff, and I quite like it, but if you look more towards the Far East, MrsT loves that, but I don’t like it, so we’re stuck:

Curries to the left o’ me
Stir-fries to the right
Here I am, stuck in the middle with cheese

It really floats my boat. What's goes in your classic stir fry?

Well, I don’t have a stir fry of my own, so any time I’m going to make something like that, I dig into my cookbooks or the internet and find something.

The one I’m making now consists of rice, soy sauce (which is something I do use quite a bit, because it has applications well outside Asian cuisine), brown sugar, ginger, garlic, chili flakes, BSCB*, broccoli, onion, carrot, water chestnuts, and bell pepper - if I’d been thinking more about it, I’d have bought some of those baby corn things…I like those.





*boneless skinless chicken breast

 

[vernplum]

Soy sauce is available in every supermarket here which find strange considering there's usually no other asian ingredients on offer (apart from sometimes coconut milk).
I found sesame oil and rice vinegar in a grotty little supermarket/bizarre run by some Chinese folk so I'm happy about that.
Potato starch, cornflour and coconut milk I can also get in the supermarket. Don't know anything much about chicken power

I thought about dried shrimps, scallops and anchovies but I think thats where my repertoire falls down, I don't really know how to use them for best effect and often think I'd be better off with the fresh version.

Could do with some suggestions or recipes using the dried proteins, they'd likely be brilliant pannier kitchen food.

Dried shrimps: soak 1 tbsp of them for half an hour in some water, drain them and then stir-fry half a head of sliced cabbage with 1 tbsp of oyster, 1 tbsp of soy sauce.

For the really small kind I just throw them into fried rice as a seasoning as they are a source of saltiness. Also good in this way is dried salted fish cut into tiny cubes.

Anchovies: you can use your gochujang in a recipe such as this using anchovies for the base stock.

Dried scallops are great boiled in some clear chicken stock. I like to boil up some bai cai/Napa cabbage in that till it becomes almost clear then use that as a base for dumpling soup.

Chicken powder (if you get the right kind) is a used as a substitute for MSG, so added to rice, as an ingredient in various kinds of dumplings, or just added to water as a soup base. Very common:

 

[badjak]

I figure it is maybe not that strange you find soy sauce.
Adobo, the Philipino one, is made with soy sauce and the philipines were a Spanish colony

vernplum
Definitely dried shrimp and anchovies, but I figured they might be available in spain.

If it would be me going and knowing I would crave SE Asian food, I would stock up on ready made boemboe (bumbu)
Like those https://www.dutchexpatshop.com/en/f...-and-spices-from-holland/spices-from-holland/

 

[vernplum]

It really floats my boat. What's goes in your classic stir fry?

One I make very regularly is beef/pork with some leafy green such as cabbage, kai lan, chye sim, etc. You can just do it with plain old green cabbage. I'd avoid bai cai/napa as it releases too much water.

Your meat needs to be velveted in advance; I think you know this: meat thinly sliced against the grain, baking soda, cornflour, pinch of 5 spice if you like, dash of light soy. Mix and marinate for at least half an hour.

100g velveted beef or pork
leafy greens (5 or 6 cupfuls roughly)
1tbsp each light soy, oyster, shaoxing, water
half thumb-sized julienned ginger
1 clove garlic sliced thinly

mix your oyster, soy and wine together
heat 2-3 tbsp of vegetable oil in a steel wok on high heat.
throw in your ginger and your meat and sear till you meat is almost cooked - about 30 seconds
throw in the vegetables and garlic
throw over the sauces and give it a good stir
throw in the water and stir fry another minute.

Now if you do the same thing but with 2 cups of broccoli (I like to microwave it for 2 mins before it goes in the pan)
and at the end add in some cornstarch slurry (1.5 tsp cornstarch mixed with 1 tbsp water then you'll get a nice takeaway-style broccoli beef.

So these would be my 'classic' stir fried dishes that I do at least once a week.

If you're looking for a noodle dish, you can try this one, instead of using the maggi noodles and its seasoning, you use plain egg noodles with a bit of chicken powder.