Sauce – East Versus West

Sauce – East Versus West

By Jake Klein

Americans love sauce. We love it in all of its forms, from condiment-style sauces to demiglace. Fundamentally, sauce and its role in a dish differ greatly in traditional Western cuisine and Asian cuisines. This love and these differences, I believe, are one of the keys to our lust for the cuisines from the East.

In Western cooking, sauce is often used as a continuation of the main flavor of a dish. For example, French cuisine uses a variety of stocks made from the bones of proteins, such as fish, chicken, duck or lamb as a base for a multitude of sauces. These stocks are boiled down to make a concentrated essence called demiglace. The demiglace might be scented with herbs or enriched with truffles or foie gras. While in Asian cuisine, many sauces are made with condiments-ingredients that come out of a jar, for example, ’s master sauce – tare, used for yakitori – where the continual dipping of chicken fortifies the flavor of the soy sauce-based sauce. While using a pre-existing sauce as a base for another may be predominately Asian, the use of the last bit to start the next batch, as they do with tare, is common on both sides of the Pacific. The French actually have a name for it, a generation sauce.

One of the most obvious areas where the use of sauce finds common footing both here and in Asia is for use with pasta and noodles. The obvious are spaghetti and bolognese or Chinese dandan noodles, lo-mein noodles tossed with a spicy peanut sesame sauce. In both of these dishes, the sauce and the noodles are equally important. 

From here, I think the use of sauce becomes much more diversified. Across Asia , sauces are used for dipping, as salt, as counterpoint or accent, or an integral part of the dish.

Probably one of the most famous dipping sauces to come from Asia is peanut sauce. Made with sweet coconut milk, roasted peanuts, curry and lime, this savory-sweet sauce is the perfect accompaniment to its co-star – satay – skewered pieces of chicken, lamb or pork marinated in coriander, cumin, turmeric and fish sauce grilled over charcoal. Fish sauce throughout Asia is used much as Americans use salt, as in the aforementioned satay marinade. 

Where it really shines, however, is in Southeast Asia’s quintessential dipping sauce, ’s nuoc cham, ’s nam pla, or ’s Teuk Trei. A potent elixir made with fish sauce, chilis and lime. These sauces are placed on the table and used very much like many Americans use salt and pepper, either to be spooned over a dish, stirred into soup, or as mentioned before,  dipping. 

One of my favorite uses of sauce is the sambals of and . Sambals are intensely flavored fiery spice and herb pastes often used as dipping sauces for satays, or as a condiment for steamed rice. Sambals are widely varied in both flavor and texture. The thing that remains constant throughout the varieties is chilies. Some of my favorites include: samabal tomat, a close cousin to ketchup, a tomato-based dipping sauce; sambal bajak, a fiery blend of chilis; and sambal trassi, made with terassi or belecan, which is salty paste made from dried krill or brine shrimp.
 

While sauces and all of their applications are varied and delicious, there is one use I find unique to Asia . That is as the main purpose of the dish. This may sound strange at first, when thinking of sauce in its traditional role as an accompaniment. However, when you think of the roti prata found in the hawker stalls of Singapore, Hainanese chicken rice from Malaysia, bon bon chicken or mapo tofu from China, it is clear that these dishes are designed to highlight the flavors of the sauce. Sure, the crispy chewy texture of the roti is great and the tenderness of steamed chicken is velvety and juicy, but they’re one-dimensional.  Mapo tofu is ’s answer to chili, where the tofu and ground pork are just a foil to carry the hot sauce. Once these items are dipped, they are transformed into classics.

So, the next time you dip a fry into ketchup, satay into peanut sauce, season your soup with fish sauce or enjoy dipping a piece of roti into chicken curry, know that there is rich history and purpose behind your actions.