Sweet And Sour Quotes

“Dinner that night is a feast of flavor. To celebrate the successful exorcism, Kagura has cooked several more dishes than the shrine's usual, simple fare- fragrant onigiri, balls of rice soaked in green tea, with umeboshi- salty and pickled plums- as filling. There is eggplant simmered in clear soup, green beans in sesame sause, and burdock in sweet-and-sour dressing. The mood is festive.”
― Rin Chupeco, The Girl from the Well

“ This dish... it's sweet-and-sour pork but with black vinegar. In fact, you could call it "Black Vinegar Pork." The glossy black of the vinegar was used to great effect in the plating, giving the dish a classy and luxuriant appearance. But the moment you put a bite in your mouth... fresh, vibrant green tea explodes in a sea of invigorating green. It is extravagantly delicious.
Chef Kuga's Sweet-and-Sour sauce includes not just black vinegar but also balsamic vinegar as well as Chef Mimasaka's smoked soy sauce! It destroys the traditional boundaries of sweet-and-sour pork, creating a dish that's rich, tangy and savory while erasing the pork's thick greasiness to push the taste of the green tea to the forefront!
He has completely succeeded in taking the green tea leaves and making them the centerpiece of his dish!
But the point most worthy of attention...
... is that this sublime taste experience wasn't created using solely Chinese-cooking techniques.
It shows an equally deft use of traditional French techniques!"
"What the... French?!
But isn't he supposed to be a purely Sichuan-Chinese chef?!"
"Yes, yes. I'm gonna explain, so quiet down and listen up, 'kay? See, there's another secret y'all don't know.
That sweet-and-sour sauce? I based it on Sauce au Vinaigre Balsamique. That's a balsamic vinegar sauce used in a whole lot of French recipes."
"Aha! Now I see. So that's where it came from!
French Vinaigre Balsamique sauce is a reduction of balsamic vinegar and Glacé de Viande!
It has a light tanginess and thick richness, which must have boosted the deliciousness of the sweet-and-sour pork into the stratosphere! ”
― Yuto Tsukuda, 食戟のソーマ 27 [Shokugeki no Souma 27]

“The crispy crunch of the savory parmesan wings. The thick and smooth Ankake sauce. And under those lies the tender and springy chicken meat that floods the mouth with its umami-laden juices with each bite!
Even the delicate aftertaste unique to the Satsuma Jidori has been vividly enhanced! You would think by adding powerfully flavored ingredients like cheese and pork jowl that the overall taste would become heavy and cloying, but that isn't the case at all!
The answer to that is in the Ankake sauce. I seasoned that Jidori stock with one special secret ingredient.
"Yukihira, quit stalling! What the heck is that ingredient? Tell me! Now!"
"It's ketchup. I used good ol' tomato ketchup to make that Ankake sauce...
... into a special house-blend sweet n' sour sauce!"
"Ketchup?!"
Sweet n' sour sauce is used in a lot of dishes, from obvious ones like sweet n' sour pork, to regional varieties ofTenshinhan crab omelet over rice, and even seafood dishes like deep-fried cod! It's especially handy for Chinese cooking, which commonly makes use of a variety of oils. It's perfect for alleviating the thick oiliness of some dishes, giving them a fresh and tangy flavor.
So by adding the tart acidity of tomato-based ketchup to make my Ankake sauce...
... it wipes out the cloying greasiness of both the Parmesan cheese and the pork jowl, leaving only their rich flavors behind. Not only that, it also brings out the Satsuma Jidori's renowned delicate aftertaste!"
"The base broth of the sauce is from a stock I made from the Jidori's carcass, so of course it will pair well with the wing meat. And to top it all off, Parmesan cheese and tomatoes are a great match for each other!"
"Oh... oh, now I see! That's how you managed to keep from smothering the Jidori's unique flavor!
Tomatoes are one big lump of the umami component glutamic acid! Add the inosinic acid from the Jidori and the Guanylic acid from the shiitake mushrooms, and you have three umami compounds all magnifying each other!
The techniques for emphasizing the unique and delicious flavors of a Jidori... the three-way umami-component magnification effect... the synergy between ketchup and cheese... the texture contrast between the crispy cheese wings and the smooth Ankake sauce...
all of those rest squarely on the foundation of the tomato's tart acidity!”
― Yuto Tsukuda, 食戟のソーマ 18 [Shokugeki no Souma 18]

“Inside an H Mart complex, there will be some kind of food court, an appliance shop, and a pharmacy. Usually, there's a beauty counter where you can buy Korean makeup and skin-care products with snail mucin or caviar oil, or a face mask that vaguely boasts "placenta." (Whose placenta? Who knows?) There will usually be a pseudo-French bakery with weak coffee, bubble tea, and an array of glowing pastries that always look much better than they taste.
My local H Mart these days is in Elkins Park, a town northeast of Philadelphia. My routine is to drive in for lunch on the weekends, stock up on groceries for the week, and cook something for dinner with whatever fresh bounty inspires me. The H Mart in Elkins Park has two stories; the grocery is on the first floor and the food court is above it. Upstairs, there is an array of stalls serving different kinds of food. One is dedicated to sushi, one is strictly Chinese. Another is for traditional Korean jjigaes, bubbling soups served in traditional earthenware pots called ttukbaegis, which act as mini cauldrons to ensure that your soup is still bubbling a good ten minutes past arrival. There's a stall for Korean street food that serves up Korean ramen (basically just Shin Cup noodles with an egg cracked in); giant steamed dumplings full of pork and glass noodles housed in a thick, cakelike dough; and tteokbokki, chewy, bite-sized cylindrical rice cakes boiled in a stock with fish cakes, red pepper, and gochujang, a sweet-and-spicy paste that's one of the three mother sauces used in pretty much all Korean dishes. Last, there's my personal favorite: Korean-Chinese fusion, which serves tangsuyuk---a glossy, sweet-and-sour orange pork---seafood noodle soup, fried rice, and black bean noodles.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“Let's do snacks."
And snacks, we did. We consumed japchae, stir-fried sweet potato noodles with shredded veggies and beef, that were sweet and savory and wonderfully chewy. Ddukbokki, chewy cylinders of rice cake, soft and springy cakes of sweet ground fish, more veggies, and sweet and spicy gochujang sauce. Soondae, a sausage stuffed with noodles, barley, and pig blood, which I had to say gave me slight pause (and made my Jewish grandmother shriek with terror), but which had the most interesting mix of textures. We cleansed our palates with hobakjuk, a porridge made from glutinous rice and the sweetest steamed pumpkin I'd ever tasted, and finished up with hotteok, sweet, crunchy fried pancakes filled with cinnamon, honey, brown sugar, and peanuts.”
― Amanda Elliot, Sadie on a Plate

“You have to come try these banchan! Or I guess you've probably already tried them with your friend Sandy. But anyway! There's a kimchi made out of cucumbers stuffed with chili and onions and some kind of garlic chives? Whatever it is, it is amazing, and you must put it in your mouth right now!"
I still felt bad about not answering the bartender. But when I turned back around to apologize or at least say something, he was off polishing a glass at the other end of the bar, conversing with one of the old men about the K-drama.
So I went with her and put it win my mouth right then. And not just the stuffed cucumber kimchi. We ate seaweed salad with sweet vinegar, and crunchy sesame lotus root, and dried shredded squid with a spicy sauce, and steamed eggs, all with sticky white rice, and then we had bulgogi, thin grilled slices of marinated beef. It was all drool-worthy. I imagined I could taste Luke in every one: the extra shake of vinegar that took the seaweed right to the edge of being too tart but stopped just in time; the intentional lack of spice on the steamed eggs, necessary for a palate cleanser between all of the bright and spicy and sour.”
― Amanda Elliot, Sadie on a Plate

“Carolina took a sip. Wow. This ponche was unlike any she'd ever had, and she considered herself a ponche snob.
"This is so good! It has a tart taste I'm not familiar with. What's in it?"
Julieta grinned. "Oh, I use tejocotes. They are simultaneously sweet and sour. Super hard to find, but I discovered an orchard in Julian that supplies them for me. I brought them up for the holiday."
Carolina liked this woman already. Tejocotes were a small stone fruit that tasted a bit sour, kind of like a guava-laced bitter apple. She loved the colors of them--- they could be variegated shades of orange, yellow, or red.”
― Alana Albertson, Kiss Me, Mi Amor

“Thick, pale golden juice burst like a tiny rain cloud, tart as a lime and sweet as a peach on my tongue. Full-bodied. A trickle dripped down my index finger, caught just in time, too prized to go to waste. I let Darwin lick it.
The real thing, its brilliant sweetness, eaten miles from human habitation, acted as an intoxicating potion. Immediately, its taste unlocked the gates to other northern lands and, as the last of the sweet-sour flavor fizzed out on my tongue, overlaying images sped joyfully through my mind: birch forests, mountains, glittering lakes, snowy trains, windswept taiga. I lingered over that single cloudberry, cherishing it, more than caviar, more than whisky or truffles, more than anything else I had ever eaten, smoked or drunk before. Once it had gone, I felt only a little grief, convincing myself that the cloudberry-- surely the ultimate 'taste of place'-- was somehow a gift; I felt I had consumed its very northernness. It brought back the similar sensations of eating a pear in an orchard, a melon in a melon field, an apple in a grove, though nothing could really compare.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels