No shooting necessary, but in my house it's both: I've been splashing it on as a table sauce for a year without coming to grief, and propose to continue. Ketchup not a table sauce? Howay...
I'm off the critter based foodstuffs at the moment but used to use fish sauce the same way, as an ingredient and as a condiment. Susan Sontag praised the nutritional value of fish sauce on a visit to north Vietnam during the war; boiled rice sprinkled with fish sauce being the staple diet of poor Vietnamese.
This thread's simmering nicely. Served with a garnish of chimichurri and we're almost there.
Much of Asia don't use table sauce. If you want a dish extra spicy or chilli hot, these are done at the cooking stage. Ketchup is a western construct ie Tomato Ketchum from the US. It was taken to into usage during the colonia era in South East Asia. Many of the Malay lexicon carry English word but spelling is straight interpretation - kecap.
The Malay and Indonesians took the Soya sauce from Chinese migrants and added sugar to it as their traditional dishes are sweeter. The Chinese communities in South East Asia however continue to use their light and dark soya source but it is never sweetened like kecap manis
As to my first point about sauces added during cooking and not after. When you you go out for Thai, Indian, Chinese food, their dishes are served without sauce on the table. They will happy accommodate any requests for sauce from Western clients as it is gets too hard to explain.
In their style of eating, there is not a single dish served such as steak or fish or chips. It is always rice, a veg , a meat dish or two. More often one dish is more tangy, one more spicy etc so there is variety of flavours at play.
If there is a side condiments for served meal in Asia it is usually sauce with cut red chilli or green chilli. It is for dipping meat or seafood morsels from a served dish. So dipping is in but chosen sauce is specific for the meat or seafood. So for Satay, you dip in peanut sauce and no other sauce.
Next time when you visit a Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese or a Malay restaurant note who how Asian families take to their dishes.
Can anyone suggest a more readily available alternative (not chunky salsa - shudder)?
