Tamarind is a common ingredient in Asian and Latin American cuisines. It’s also a main component of Worcestershire and A-1 sauces. It gives food a tart edge that’s not as volatile as vinegar. We used tamarind in two different recipes last week with vastly different results.
The first recipe was out of the New York Times. Julian adapted it in an attempt to reproduce a pork tamarindo recipe we used to order at a Cuban restaurant in Miami. He’s been trying to reproduce that recipe for years. Last week’s iteration was as close as he’s come. He had to add more chicken broth and tomato paste to the sauce to amp up the umami. He served it alongside rice and fried plantains.
My recipe was from The Simple Art of Vietnamese Cooking, by Binh Duong and Marcia Kiesel. It was for a hot and sour fish soup. I’ve made iterations of this soup from other cookbooks with great success. This one, not so much. The recipe called for soaking 1/3 cup tamarind paste with 1/3 cup water, then straining the fluid. Other recipes use a much lower ratio of paste to water, which is what I should have done. The final result was almost black from the tamarind, and very astringent. I wonder if this was an error in editing. I should have trusted my gut and cut back the tamarind considerably.
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