| Hot bean sauce is an excellent spice for any Chinese dish (not all
- most). We like all our food moderately spicy and I use bean sauce
in most of my Chinese cooking.
It is called Bean paste also, it contains one or various kinds of
beans and ground red chillies, oil, maybe garlic, vinegar, salt
and maybe other spices - more often than not it contains soy beans.
You can buy it from any Chinese store - usually sold in glass bottles
kept where the soy suace and other spices are kept.
TIP : Use sesame oil for Chinese cooking - tastes great.
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Black bean sauce is fermented soy beans made into a sauce.
There is some difference between suace and paste however.
Not so much in the ingredients, more so the consistancy.
You can make your own black bean sauce at home.
First, purchase a bag of black beans at your favorite oriental
food supply store. They come partially dried and packed in tons
of salt.
Soak them for about two hours or more, rinsing occasionally.
You want to make sure you de-salinate them as they are very salty.
Next you crush up garlic (to taste), add crushed chile peppers or
thai pepper sauce (you can make this at home too)
Throw this mixture into a food-processor or blender and blend to
the consistancy you want adding water to thin as desired.
I've then cooked this as well as just thrown into the frig as is.
It doesn't seem to make too much difference either way.
That's about all you need to add for the basic black bean sauce.
You may experiment with this by adding five-spice powder, black
or white pepper, coriander (this is more for the sweet black bean
sauce though) and whatever else you may want to try.
When you make your own it makes beef and shitake (or black) mushrooms
with bean sauce taste better than at any resteraunt this side of
Hong Kong.
Also, try cooking button, shitake, straw, black, abalone and oyster
mushrooms adding the bean sauce at the end. (note: add a heavy sweet
soy to the button mushrooms when nearly done) This is a very meaty
tasting dish without meat.
I've got to go eat now. All this talk about food.
(Damned cafeteria!)
Rob
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| Be careful that you are buying the right stuff. There are three different
things being talked about here:
HOT BEAN PASTE (or SAUCE): This is made from fermented soy beans with salt,
garlic, chili peppers, and other stuff. The key here is chili peppers.
BEAN SAUCE (or PASTE): This is made from salted, fermented soy beans and
other stuff. No chili peppers, though. It comes in two varieties,
in cans or jars. One variety has soy bean halves in it, the other
version is ground. They taste somewhat different--ground bean sauce
is saltier.
BLACK BEAN PASTE (or SAUCE): This is also made from fermented beans, but
it is jet black (regular bean sauce is brown) and made from ground
fermented black beans. You can get it pre-made, in cans or plastic
bags, or you can buy fermented black beans and chop or mash them
yourself. It is usually cooked with minced garlic and ginger.
These three bean pastes or sauces give completely different results, so make
sure you get the correct one.
--PSW
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