Food Innovation Safari: Nam Phrik, the Comma Chameleon, and Fight Club Fish Sauce

Next up is a shot of a Nam Prik platter at Bangkok restaurant, Sri Trat, taken by Jenny Lau, founder of the Chinese food culture hub, Celestial Peach.

In her recent post, Lau discusses how Nam Prik – a Thai chilli sauce made of fermented shrimp paste, chillies, garlic, and lime juice – can be a showpiece addition for an elevated vegetable salad (ignoring, of course, the whole fish seen in the photo).

"Take the nam prik platter you might get in Thailand – these combine fermented, fried, parboiled and raw herbs and veg (the variety of cooking methods and textures are important for digestion and stimulation of all the senses)," she says.

"But the star of the show in the middle is the nam prik; a funky flavour glue keeping you coming back for more.

"With this in mind, unseasoned veg is a necessary blank canvas, especially against the backdrop of other intensely flavoured sharing dishes."

Superiority Burger, the East Village veggie fast food spot that closed at the end of 2021, is hard at work developing a new menu ahead of its triumphant return, with its Instagram account teasing a 'deluxe' version opening soon.

This week, a dessert popped up: "a commercial cracker-crusted (vegan) and (DELICATE) coconut custard mango li hing mui-glazed pearl pie".

The cheesecake-esque innovation looks the business, and we're particularly interested in the li hing mui glaze.

Li Hing Mui is salty dried Chinese plums, and it has a strong, distinctive flavour – namely a combination of sweet, sour and salty.

In its powdered form, Li Hing Mui has been popular in artisan cocktail bars and as a flavouring for sweets. And here, as a glaze, we imagine it delivers a tangy tartness that pairs nicely with the mellow coconut custard.

Nostalgia-driven comfort food has become a huge hit with UK diners over the past few years, particularly since the disruption of lockdown, with chefs drawing from their respective childhoods to deliver creatively ‘grown-up’ spins on comforting classics.

That's not to say that nostalgia is reserved for the comfort food scene, as showcased by Irish chef Cúán Greene this month with his new high-end dessert inspired by his childhood experiences eating ice creams, specifically the flavours of the sticks once he'd finished.

"The dish reminds me of my childhood, eating ice creams and chewing the stick on the way home," Greene wrote on his Instagram post.

"I somehow always loved the taste. Only found out recently that they are made from birch wood."

The currently unnamed dessert is built of milk ice cream, dried berries, shortcake and horseradish and walnut oil, with the lot to be eaten with a birchwood spoon.

Rounding us off this month is another trip to see the zero waste wizards of Silo in East London.

Previously, we've highlighted their experiments with amazake, and their Siloaf ice cream sandwich as an example of a food waste-saving innovation.

Now, it's their fermented tuna garum (or Fight Club Fish Sauce as it's brilliantly labelled) that's caught our eye.

In an Instagram video posted this week, they revealed the now year-old sauce, which is made from the bones of tuna which, in true Silo fashion, they refused to waste.

In the short clip, the garum is described as "super indulgent", "quite spectacular", and "a wildly delicious barrel of umami gold", with the term 'Guts to Gold' coined by the team.

No word yet as to how they might use it on their menu, but when they do, Egg Soldiers will be there!