Vegetarian "fish" Sauce for Asian Cooking

This recipe is from "1000 Vegetarian Recipes" by Carol Gelles. I keep a bottle of this in my fridge at all times for Southeast Asian cooking. I never tried fish sauce before I went veg, so I can't say how much it tastes like the "real" thing, but it offers a different flavor than plain soy sauce. It has kind of a sea taste from the seaweed, and it's not as salty as straight-up soy sauce. The dried kelp/kombu is hard to measure, in the book it says "six 1 1/2 inch pieces", but I just break off 3 good sized strips. Cooking time includes time for the sauce to cool.

• Ready In: 35 mins
• Serves: 32
• Yields: 2 cups

Ingredients

• 1 1⁄3 cups water
• 2⁄3 cup soy sauce
• 3  slices  dried kelp (kombu seaweed)
• 1  sun-dried tomato (not oil-marinated)

Directions

1. Put all the ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Let it cool, strain into a sterilized container, and store in the fridge or freezer.
2. Use anytime fish sauce is called for in a recipe.