Soy Sauce for Beginners Quotes

“Govern a family as you would cook a small fish—very gently.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“One cannot refuse to eat just because there is a chance of being choked.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“They said someday you’ll find / all who love are blind / Oh, when your heart’s on fire / You must realize / Smoke gets in your eyes.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“I described Ba's dream of making soy sauce a staple for Western cooks. "He makes a stellar boeuf bourguignon with light soy sauce in place of salt," I told the girl. The delicate flavors of our sauce enhanced the rich umami taste of the meat. Our sauce rounded out the stock, highlighting the bright, acidic tomatoes, preventing the red wine from overwhelming the dish.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“When he made my favorite bak kut teh, a fragrant, spicy soup with tender pork spare ribs and fat shitake mushrooms, he always had me sample the stock. He taught me to make a big slurping sound as I sipped to avoid burning my tongue. He taught me to discern the warmth of cinnamon, the tang of orange peel, and the mellow licorice of star anise. Most importantly, Ba taught me to appreciate the way a dash of Lin's light soy sauce brightened each of these flavors while pulling them together into a single, harmonious whole.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“Real soy sauce is as complex as a fine wine- fruity, earthy, floral also can, lah." Uncle Robert pointed out the lively acidity of the light soy sauce in comparison to the rich, mellow sweetness of the dark one. Light soy, he explained, was used for seasoning and dipping; dark soy was used for cooking because its flavors developed under heat.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“These are some of my favorite smells: toasting bagel, freshly cut figs, the bergamot in good Earl Grey tea, a jar of whole soybeans slowly turning beneath a tropical sun.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“That was the urge to drink. In the moment the wave peaked, you were sure it would sweep you off your feet, engulf you, drown you. But if you braced yourself and faced it straight on, the wave would pass. You would emerge on the other side. “Try”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“women who sat clutching their purses in their laps as they eyed the men with equal parts intrigue and revulsion.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“Suddenly I questioned why I so indiscriminately craved the approval of others.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“As we followed, she listed all the dishes Auntie Tina had ordered: crispy eel in sweet sauce, smoked duck two ways, hand-pulled noodles with crab roe- "luckily we had enough pregnant crabs on hand!"- and others I could not decipher from their poetic yet opaque Chinese names: squirrel-shaped Mandarin fish, eight treasure rice, four happiness pork.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“Before long our entire table was covered in food: an earthenware ramekin of pearly-pink prawns bathed in garlic butter; translucent, paper-thin slices of cured ham fanned out on the plate; tortilla espanola with nuggets of potato and sweet onion; candy-stripe beets studded with goat cheese and almond slivers; slow-cooked short ribs almost silky in their tenderness; thick chorizo stew.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“Who knew that specialty food producers from bastions of Americana as Gainesville, Florida, and Louisville, Kentucky, had begun to experiment with artisanal soy sauce? According to a prominent food magazine, the Kentucky producer even aged its sauce in old bourbon barrels for an added whiff of smoke and local color. Top chefs all over America were raving about the depth of flavor the smoky sauce brought to dry-aged filet mignon and buttery black cod. An avant-garde chef in Chicago had infused the soy sauce into butter. The resulting concoction was spread on bite-sized brioche, topped with tobiko caviar, and served as the amuse bouche to his seventeen-course tasting menu.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“Inside, the house was filled with people dressed in varying interpretations of the party's "Roaring Twenties" theme- chosen to commemorate the end of Kat's own roaring twenties. There were a couple of flapper dresses and Louise Brooks wigs, but the majority of the crowd was simply dressed up: girls in sequins, guys in blazers and jeans. They spilled out of the living room and onto the patio and garden surrounding the swimming pool; they clustered around the outdoor bar and the long table laden with finger foods: dumplings in bamboo steamer baskets, assorted sushi rolls, chicken satay made onsite by a hired cook- a wizened Malay man who'd brought his own mini grill and pandan-leaf fan.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“The hawker center was a large, open-air hall that housed four dozen independently owned food stalls, each specializing in a single signature dish, from barbecued stingray coated in fiery, pungent shrimp paste to Hokkien mee, a mixture of yellow and rice noodles, fried with eggs and then braised in rich, savory prawn stock.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“The mixture, Ahkong's creation, was sweet and tangy and savory- a comforting, full-bodied flavor like burnt sugar, or brown butter that contrasted sharply with the dancing bubbles on my tongue.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“Once people saw how a single teaspoon can bring out the fragrance of scallion and ginger and garlic, or how a light coating can amplify the smokiness of tender roast meat,"- here, he bunched up his fingertips and brought them to his lips-"how could they turn away?”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“These are some of my favorite smells: toasting bagel, freshly cut figs, the bergamot in good Earl Grey tea, a jar of whole soybeans slowly turning beneath a tropical sun.
You'd expect the latter to smell salty, meaty, flaccid- like what you'd smell if you unscrewed the red cap of the bottle on a table in your neighborhood Chinese restaurant and stuck your nose in as far as it would go. But real, fermenting soybeans smell nothing like sauce in a plastic bottle. Tangy and pungent, like rising bread or wet earth, these soybeans smell of history, of life, of tiny, patient movements, unseen by the naked eye.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“In polite conversation, we’ll tell you we have two seasons: hot-and-wet and hot-and-dry. In less polite conversation, we’ll reveal there are three: hot, very hot, and very fucking hot.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“Govern a family as you would cook a small fish—very gently.” I said, repeating the Chinese proverb Mr. Liu had told me.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners

“wasn’t it: I’d awakened a longing I could not control, an awareness of the spaces he could not fill.”
― Kirstin Chen, Soy Sauce for Beginners