FROM BARBECUE TO SAND DADDY; A SAUCE POST

The other day I was discussing food with a gentleman from Louisiana who had spent some time in South East Asia. He mentioned a sauce his mother used, which she could no longer find.
I think I know roughly what it was. But really, it could be almost anything.

Sauce, in the South-East Asian context, means the entire spectrum from freshly made and soupy liquids to dark foul-smelling pastes that must be tempered and made palatable by diluting and cooking.
Sometimes they're concentrates, sometimes fermentation products.
And sometimes surprisingly familiar. Albeit cleverly disguised.

Here are two examples, both multinational.


燒烤醬 SIU HAAU JEUNG

Chinese barbecue sauce, as used in many restaurants, is one of the earliest examples of fusion cuisine.
From most to least, the ingredients are ketchup, apple cider vinegar, orange juice, and finely minced onion. Plus a little mustard powder, black pepper, chili oil, chili paste, and salt, as considered appropriate by the cook.
Generally three times as much ketchup as vinegar, four times as much vinegar as orange juice, and four times as much orange juice as honey. The quantity of the other ingredients ranges from minor to minute.
Usually it will be reduced to a thick gloop for storage, but it is also often compounded as needed and dumped over the raw meat to marinate.
Some cooks also add red miso (紅味噌 'hong mei chang') to the recipe.

Well-marbled fatty pork, whether 三層肉 ('saam chang yiuk': three layer meat), 梅花豬肉 ('mui faa chü yiuk': plum blossom pork), 五花腩 or 五花肉 ('ng faa naam', 'ng faa yiuk': five flower pork brisket), sauced and rubbed with the cooked-down version, then roasted in the oven or braised on the stove top, is quite scrumptious.

I know you've had it. Just think of all those delicious riblets!

It is also a stellar marinade for chicken wings, by the way. If you make it at home, adhere to the general proportions of ketchup, vinegar, juice, and honey as outlined above, then add the remaining ingredients to taste, before simmering down. It will keep for a while in the refrigerator.


沙茶醬, 沙爹醬 SATE SAUCE

The old-style Chinese sate sauce must be differentiated from the newer version. Both ultimately derive from a South-East Asian model brought back by Fujianese (Hokkienese) returning to China, but the version that has dried shrimp and fish-paste as a significant percentage is more of a longtime Chinese settlement in Java taste, and must be used sparingly as just one ingredient among many, whereas the modern Chinese version will contain more peanuts and the customary East-Indian spices.
Both 沙茶醬 and 沙爹醬 are pronounced 'sa-te cheo' in Hokkien, and mean the same thing. But 沙茶醬 (Cantonese: 'sa cha jeung') has the dried shrimpy flavour, 沙爹醬 (Cantonese: 'sa de jeung') is peanutty.
Either may be used as a component in other sauces, or condimentally when grilling or hot potting.

Note that the standard Hokkien term for sauce is 汁 (Hokkien pronunciation: chiap; Cantonese: 'jap'), from whence the second syllable in the English word 'ketchup' (茄汁) and the Malay-Javanese term 'ketjap' for soy-sauce. The difference between the concepts 醬 ('jeung') and 汁 ('jap') is one of compounding, processing, or fermentation, versus moisture and juice. Soy sauce (豉油 'si yau') belongs in the 醬 category, fish sauce (魚露 'yü lou') is clearly more 汁 than anything else.

KETCHUP

Speculatively, the path whereby the term 茄汁 ("keh-chap": tomato sauce) became the Javanese, Malay, and Indo-Dutch term for soy sauce may be explained by the habit of pickling fresh ingredients in a soy-sauce base, such as likely happened with tomatoes. If the resultant product is simmered down considerably till it approximates the same volume as the amount of soy sauce which was added, the salt content will be similar to that of soy sauce, hence it can be stored, and the taste will have been intensified.

Modern-day Indonesian soy sauce is often sweetened, which likewise provides a combination and layering of flavours. Once tomatoes became more common in the region, their addition would have been seen as an unnecessary complication; why pickle them when you can use them fresh?
Similar processes are still used to prepare strong condiments and non-perishable sauces by both Chinese and South-East Asians today. Mushroom soy sauce (草菰老抽 'tsou-gu lou-jau') is an example of one such. Look for either Pearl River Bridge brand (珠江橋牌) or Amoy (淘化大同, 淘大牌).


The Dutch version of sate sauce often consists of fried onion, peanut butter, palm sugar, tamarind or vinegar, chili sauce, and fish paste. Some versions are shockingly bad, some similar to the mediocre sweet versions preferred by Thais and Singaporeans.

Indonesians make the best. They invented it.  It's a signature of their cuisine, and they add it to any number of meat and vegetable dishes.
But unlike the Dutch, they do not use it on French Fries.


About the title of this post?

沙爹醬 'sa de jeung': sand daddy sauce. The older name (沙茶醬) makes just as little sense, as it means 'sand tea sauce'.
Both are phonetic borrowings of the Javanese and Malay term 'saté', referring to grilled skewered meat.
Satay should not be confused with 'panggang', which is more like Southern-style barbecue, in that a large cut or the entire animal is slow-roasted and basted for several hours.


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