Tamarind pictures (1 of 2)
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Tamarind is a very common ingredient in Southeast Asian and Indian cuisines, but an exotic and foreign ingredient to many in the west. I often receive emails from readers asking me about tamarind; I hope this post about tamarind would help you understand this core ingredient.
Tamarind–or “assam” in local Malay language–is the fruit of tamarind trees. Tamarind (pictured above) usually comes in a block and sealed tight in a plastic packaging and must be soaked in water and then squeezed to extract the juice. The pulp and residue will then be discarded…
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Taucheo (Soy Bean Paste/Bean Sauce) pictures (1 of 3)
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There are many ingredients used in Nyonya recipes–some common while others are exotic and unknown ingredients to many foreigners. As mentioned in “Introduction to Nyonya Food,” Nyonya cuisine is the result of mixing Chinese ingredients to local produce, spices, herbs, and roots to create the exotic flavors. Hence, I have started a “Nyonya Ingredients” series to cover all essential ingredients used in Nyonya food.
Chinese ingredients are core to many Nyonya recipes, for example: taucheo/preserved soy bean paste or 豆酱 (doujiang) in Chinese language. (In Indonesia, taucheo is called tauco.) Taucheo or soy bean paste is made from yellow soy beans. The yellow beans are salted and fermented, much like the process of making soy sauce. There are a few variations of taucheo in the market: whole beans, half-mashed, or fine. The difference is in the texture of the fermented soy beans. I always buy the ones in between (as pictured above), where the soy beans are somewhat mashed up due to the fermenting process but not processed to fine paste. You can always use a mortar and pestle to break up the fermented soy beans for recipes that call for fine texture…
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