vegan fish sauce

in preparation for making ndole i am starting with fish sauce. i want to expose my family to food from different countries, but being vegan and now needing to cut my husband's intake of animal products by 25% according to his PCM for cholesterol... well, there's going to be a lot of adaptations. my goal is to try to stay as true to a recipe's flavors as i can. that will sometimes mean going out pretty far to bring it back in. fish sauce is generally associated with asian foods, not african - but ndole is a coastal recipe of Cameroonian decent. my first thought was for garum, which is greek in origin - so much closer to africa. but - every vegan garum recipe was simply fish sauce. so, that's where we are. in the end i took 3 different recipes and blended them to this (hindsight being what it is, i really should have looked into Cameroonian spices instead, but too late now):

4c water
4 cloves garlic, sliced
2t black salt (it has a sulfuric quality i thought would be better for this application)
2T bragg's (it's what i had, tamari was from the og recipes)
1/4c seaweed
1 sprig of fresh oregano

bring to a boil and simmer until you end up with 2 cups

that's it. part 1 of ndole and poulet p.g. for african food. part 2 will be making chicken seitan or whatever faux chicken i settle on.


an obligatory photo for the grandparents of my kitchen non helper. it was snack time, not cook time. 🤷 it's not going to help later tonight that she fell asleep in class today for 30 minutes. 🤦 we are trying taekwondo with her again today, maybe that will help tire her out. or maybe it will be lots of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood tonight.

and a video from tkd today... hopefully i'll figure out videos on here shortly.