the joy of soy.docVIP

the joy of soy 　　If you need to stock a Chinese kitchen， you might start with a good bottle of soy sauce. But in order to understand why this ingredient is so critical， youll have to first look at the role of another essential commodity： salt. 　　Salts ability to preserve food to last far out of season must have made it seem almost mystical ?C if very taxable ?C to the ancients. From the dawn of the first Chinese empire， the state held a monopoly over salt sales as a way of raising state revenue. Remarkably， it still does. State control made salt a rare， expensive commodity， and regular Chinese needed a way to make the little they could get their hands on last a long time. 　　One of the most common ways to stretch salt was through brewing fermented sauces. Enter soy sauce. Over two thousand years ago， Chinese would make a particularly pungent condiment， known as jiang， by layering fish with salt and soybeans until they fermented into a thick ooze ?C very much like the garum of ancient Rome， or the fermented fish sauces found in modern-day Southeast Asian cuisine. 　　Earthen jars packed tightly with this pungent mixture were household treasures， carefully managed for months or sometimes years. The soybeans both sped up fermentation and were noticeably cheaper than the fish， making them useful enough that the fish component was eventually ditched altogether. Its said that this sauce is the ancestor of today’s soy sauce， while its fishier cousins endure from Korea to Indonesia. 　　To get sauced these days， soybeans are soaked， boiled and let to sit with a particular strain of fungus， Aspergillius oryzae， in brine. The fungus consumes and breaks down the starches in the soybeans， a process which leaves a dark brown liquid behind. The mixture is then pressed to extract every last morsel of flavor before bottling. 　　Each batch of this brew has varying levels of quality， and variance in water content and length of fermentation affect the taste. Like olive oil， the first p