We know the drill. Someone throws a party. You are the guest and you bring a bottle of wine as a gift for being invited to the party.
Your humble narrator loves being a guest but hates buying wine. Would love to have a system like a wedding shower with a registry, and you pick a bottle of wine from their list.
Wine is my blind spot. I could buy a 40 oz. bottle of La Fin du Monde, a great Quebecois beer. I could bring some great Michigan fruit-related hard cider.
I don't really want to bring alcohol to a party these days. I do so because the unofficial rules require this.
If I were throwing the party, I wouldn't mind a couple of bottles of wine for cooking. I would want to invite people who would know me well enough and say, "In lieu of wine, I'm bringing you a bottle of Red Boat Fish Sauce." I would love that instead of a bottle of wine.
Fish sauce is the key, though Red Boat is one of the best. Umami in a bottle. I cook with fish sauce quite a bit. I would use up a bottle of fish sauce. I wouldn't drink it, unlike a bottle of wine.
A bottle of quality fish sauce is comparable to the cost of a decent bottle of wine, so the cost factor isn't an issue.
You aren't even limited to fish sauce.
A bottle of banana ketchup from the Philippines.
A jar of ajvar from Eastern Europe.
Get some Romesco sauce from Spain.
How about dark sesame oil from Japan.
Find a good adobo sauce or butter chicken sauce.
Add flavor to an otherwise bland kitchen instead of yet another bottle of wine.
A fun little trick: Love using ajvar but it goes bad very quickly. Pour the contents into an ice tray to freeze portions.
Let the ice cube serving of ajvar thaw in the refrigerator and use in a dish. A small amount adds a lot of flavor to a dish.
The idea is that you might go down a certain, unnamed aisle in the grocery store and wonder what to do with a condiment that isn't typically in your pantry. Once the condiment is in your pantry, then you feel compelled to research ways to use that in your meal planning.
Would you rather have 10 bottles of wine, 3 of them that could have been better? Would you rather have 7 bottles of wine and 3 umami based containers?
Maybe you don't cook too often and a bottle of banana ketchup would gather dust in your cabinet. Fish sauce is subtle as long as you don't smell it. I do smell it but I can handle that smell. Tastes way better than the smell.
A Romesco sauce and ajvar have ingredients you will recognize. This could be a way to travel without leaving your kitchen.
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You may not want 10 umami containers after a party but the gift of umami can bring unexpected joy. Maybe you put Romesco sauce on your scrambled eggs, like you would with a Mexican salsa. Maybe you add an ice cube or two of ajvar to a Sloppy Joe mix.
Maybe you have chicken thighs in your freezer, which would pair well with adobo or butter chicken sauce.
Try a little bit of anything new in your kitchen. Wine has its limits in cooking. Umami has more unleashed possibilities to add flavor to your food.
photos credit: me
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