Saucy Story from a Chinese Alley

Team Chronicle

If you are ready to create a little stir in your life’s recipes we may introduce you to a wide range of new sauces in a fairly inexpensive way. These mouth-watering sauces furnish a dish with new flavour profiles – without ‘redimixing’ and spoiling the magnificent original. Here you can discover a few destinations that promise to provide you with authentic and offbeat sauces and spices. These sauces are guaranteed to inspire the chef within you to awaken, arise, and emerge!

POU CHONG
Established in 1958, Pou Chong may be considered as one of the most popular and authentic brands of the Chinese sauces. They provide a wide range of sauces as well as spices. To learn how it all began we need to navigate the lanes of history to some extent.

The present owner, the smart, dynamic Janice Lee, becomes emotional while recollecting her grand dad, Lee Shin Chuang, who travelled all the way from a small town of China to India as a very young boy. When he reached India, Lee found the food to be very flat. He wanted to add a little spice to the local fare and make it tastier. He started experimenting with chilli tomato along with various herbs – and ended up with myriad sauces.

His son Dominic Lee (Janice’s father), who is currently the CEO of Pou Chong, is also passionate about sauces. He introduced a few sauces like Thai sweet chilli sauce, hoisin sauce, black bean sauce and oyster sauce, the last one being made from sea oysters. Chilli is blended with other ingredients like garlic, tomato and herbs.

Some Indian spices are often added to produce a new variety of sauces with familiar Indian flavour. Hoisin sauce is the secret ingredient used in the preparations of chicken, pork and duck dishes. Soya sauce, however, comes in two varieties – dark soya sauce is used in noodles, chicken and pork dishes to add both colour and aroma, while light soya is used for fried rice, etc., to add flavour.

Apart from sauces, Pou Chong also manufactures various sprinkles, as they are called, for toppings like basil, rosemary, parsley, thyme and mixed herbs, by using different herbs. Chilli oil is also available to add flavour and taste to the dishes.

We find a gold mine on the shelves – a veritable treasure house of fish and prawn wafers ready to set our taste buds on fire. Their wholesale as well as retail outlet on Chattawala Gully in Tirretti Bazar is a one-stop destination for food lovers, offering a wide range of sauces and noodles. Last but not the least Janice Lee promises to give you a ready-to-cook range of both veg and chicken dumplings – as the Chinese have chosen to call their poorer cousin, the humble but delicious momo.

Address: 14/1 Chattawala Gully, Kolkata – 700 012
Phone: 9007368759
Sauces Available: A variety of chilli and capsico sauce, dark and light soya sauces, Thai sweet-chilli and hoisin sauce along with noodles, prawn and fish wafers

Let’s take a quick glance at the popular Chinese cooking sauces available at the Tirretti Bazar outlets

• Soya sauce: These are generally of two types – dark and light. Both are made from fermented soya bean, salt, water and sometimes roasted meat as well. The light soya sauce is much thinner, more salty. It is often used as a seasoning or dipping sauce. Dark soya sauce on the contrary is richer, less salty and slightly sweet to taste. It is caramelised to get the colour. This sauce is mostly used for colour and is an optional ingredient.

Use: This sauce is used in stir fries, noodles, stews, dumplings, steam buns and soups.

Storage: Soya sauces never go bad. Leave them on your kitchen counter and they are sure to last for a year or two.

• Oyster sauce: It is prepared by slowly simmering minced oyster and oyster juices in water until the liquid condenses down. The flavour is so good that on a little addition it can cook up any dish to another level. There’s a range of oyster sauces available, from premium to regular which differs in the percentage of oyster content.

Use: It is often used in stir fries such as pepper steak, beef broccoli, fried rice, stir fried noodles, steam buns and dumplings. It has a great flavour and hence can be used as a dipping, seasoning or a meat marinating sauce. The vegetarian option of the sauce has a mushroom flavour and is shell-fish free.

Storage: Oyster sauces should be refrigerated with lid covered, as they grow mould at room temperature.

• Chinese black vinegar: The difference in black vinegar from the white comes in the way it is made. Black vinegar is prepared from sorghum and glutinous rice where sugar is transformed to form alcohol first and then to acid and finally aged for years.

Use: It is a must ingredient in the dipping sauce of a dumpling. In general it is used in recipes such as sweet and sour pork ribs, stir fries, spicy wontons and noodles. Its unique colour and woody flavour makes it an absolutely indispensable ingredient in Chinese cuisine.

Storage: Leave the lid covered completely at room temperature and it’ll last for ages.

• Hoisin sauce: This is typically a Chinese barbeque sauce and also an important stir fry sauce in Cantonese cuisine. It is made with soya bean, sugar, sesame, garlic, chillies, a bunch of spices and even sweet potatoes.

Use: This sauce adds a bunch of flavours to your dishes like baked chicken, Peking duck, stir fried noodles and so on. The sauce can also be used as a dipping sauce in Chinese crispy pork belly. It actually brightens up the food.

Storage: It is best kept refrigerated.

• Szechwan sauce: This is a spicy, salty paste made from fermented broad beans. Celery is also a key ingredient in this paste. You can add it to stir fries for that spicy kick and its unique distinctive taste.

Use: This is used in mapo doufu, spice cooked pork, Taiwan beef noodles etc.

Storage: The sauce must be refrigerated.

SING HO
Address: 12, Chattawala Gully, Kolkata – 700 012
Phone: 033 2239 0686
Sauces Available: Red and green chilli, hot garlic, light soya, dark soya, tomato sauce and kasundi

A rare find, 12, Chhattawala Gully is a very good destination to pick up some unusually prepared sauces which are not commonly available in the market. William Chen founded this hub in 1995. Since then ‘Sing Ho’ has become a familiar brand that manufactures various types of sauces primarily used to add taste and flavour to authentic Chinese cuisine. The main factory of Sing Ho is located in the Tangra area, the newly grown China town, the old one being that of Tirretti Bazaar. According to the manager Philip, they are focussed at manufacturing the sauces such as soya sauce which are most commonly used in the food destinations. These sauces generally sell in pet jars of 200, 500 and 700 grams, at the most pocket friendly rates. Quality ingredients and attention to detail are vital to titillate our taste buds.

SING CHEUNG
Address: P-12, New CIT Road (Lu Shun Sarani), Kolkata – 700 073
Phone: 94339 90497
Sauces Available: Green chilli, red chilli, garlic chilli, tomato chilli, dark soya, light soya, mustard kasundi, sesame oil, hoisin sauce

When it comes to passion for sauce making we must hear the version of Wang, the present owner of Sing Cheung. The first generation of the family, FS Young came all the way from his homeland in China in 1954 and started the sauce making business in a miniature form.

Wang wishes his family business, this legacy, to be carried forward by the next generation. Soya sauce, the most popular in their brand, is made out of 12 different herbs, fermented for at least 6 to 12 months along with soya bean and other ingredients. The most traditional and age-old methods are practised till date.

The soya sauce was once upon a time quite expensive and was primarily used for adding salt to food. Today it has metamorphosed into the most commonly used ingredient in Chinese cooking, especially in stir-fries. It can be brewed or blended resulting in different levels of sweet and salty tastes.

Hoisin sauce is also available here. Though not as thick as soya sauce, it looks similar and is used to sweeten bean sauce. Hoisin sauce is used to manipulate our taste buds for the varied flavours in meat dishes.

Along with soya and hoisin sauces Sing Cheung also has a varied range of chilli sauces in green chilli, red chilli, tomato chilli and garlic chilli.  Momo sauce is also available at its best.

Apart from sauces, the outlet houses a huge range of products such as sesame oil, kasundi, etc. Their clientele includes chefs from road side stalls to the top five star hotels like the Oberoi and the Taj hotels. Their products are greatly in demand and coveted by clients from other metropolitan cities and small towns.

“Although we do not go for large scale publicity of our products, we have been successful in establishing this brand by sheer word of mouth,” says an excited Wang. One must not miss out on Sing Cheung’s mustard kasundi which has a unique taste, completely different from those available in the market.

Thus Tirretti Bazar happens to be a dream destination for any chef or creative cook worth his salt, who would find everything he needs here to cook up a dish fit for the palate of a king.

Next time you feel in the mood to try something different, visit the gully – revel in the authentic and offbeat cuisine of the true blue food connoisseur. As Confucius says, ‘Talk doesn’t cook rice’ – you had better sauce it to perfection!