Mắm nêm explained
Mắm nêm is a sauce made of fermented fish. Unlike the more familiar nước mắm (fish sauce), mắm nêm is powerfully pungent, similar to shrimp paste. Many of the regions that produce fish sauce, for example Central Vietnam, also produce mắm nêm. It is commonly mixed with sugar, pineapple, and spices to make a prepared sauce called mắm nêm pha sẵn, the key ingredient in neem sauce.
References
Notes and References
- Book: Vu-Hong, Lien . Rice and Baguette: A History of Food in Vietnam . . 2016 . 103–104 . 978-1-780-23657-5 . Mắm nêm was a typical Cham food that entered southern Vietnamese cuisine during the Nguyễn Southern Push. (...) Cham food is very much like that of Cambodia, Laos and northern Thailand. It is sweeter and spicier than northern Vietnamese food and uses many different types of mắm, one of which is mắm nêm. (...) Another mắm that may have been a Cham product is mắm ruốc, a similar paste made with ground small shrimps and salt and left to ferment for days until it changes from purple to red..
- Book: Vo, Nghia M. . Saigon: A History . . 2011 . 18 . 978-0-786-48634-2 . They consumed mắm nêm, a fish sauce, which turned out to be Cham in origin..
- Book: Li, Tana . Nguyễn Cochinchina: Southern Vietnam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries . . 1998 . 113 . 978-0-877-27722-4 . Amazingly, even mắm nêm, the well-known fish sauce that is considered to be so typically Vietnamese, may actually have a Cham origin, according to some Vietnamese scholars..
