Pursue. Put fish sauce in your cookies

I love fish sauce. Everything about this amber liquid (patis, as my Filipino family calls it) is flavorful, fragrant, and reminds me of home. Growing up, there was always a bottle of Rufina patis with the recognizable green and white label on our table. My parents added patis to sour tamarind stews like pork sinigang while cooking, and the bottle was always available if I wanted a little more on the side while I ate the finished dish.

My Aunt Rina used to dip her green apple slices in patis, which I later learned was a subtle ode to the beloved Filipino snack of dipping fresh green mango in bagoong (fermented shrimp paste). So the sweet and salty combination of fruit and fish always made sense to me, long before I was old enough to add salty, fermented condiments to desserts like miso banana bread and soy sauce chocolate cake. , and long before I decided to put a recipe for calamansi and shortbread fish sauce in my cookbook, Mayumu.

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Calamansi is a small Filipino fruit that tastes like a hybrid of lemon, lime and orange. As a child, the combination of freshly squeezed calamansi juice and patis was my favorite sawsawan (dipping sauce) to add to lugaw, a Filipino rice porridge similar to congee. Used in tandem with patis, it’s a wonderfully sour and salty blend.

In my mind, the perfect recipe is about finding a balance of flavors across the spectrum of our five tastes, and experimenting with the umami and savory aspects of patis can help temper the sweetness of a rich dessert. The key to using the condiment effectively is to achieve the right ratios so that the ingredient doesn’t overpower the other elements in your cakes, caramels and cookies.

For my stamped Calamansi fish sauce shortbread recipe, the patis comes into play in the frosting. The cookie dough has just a hint of vanilla extract, which makes the resulting shortbread a rich, buttery vessel for the bright, briny flavors of the frosting. By mixing calamansi juice, fresh lime zest and a pinch of patis with sifted powdered sugar, it becomes sweet, sour and slightly funky all at once. Instead of masking the fishy flavor of the patis, the citrus and sugar duo simply tempers it so the patis doesn’t overpower your senses. By brushing this glaze over the shortbread, you get a lovely smell of each component working together. Once the frosting hardens and you bite into a cookie, it’s decidedly sweet enough to satisfy your dessert craving, but salty enough that you want more than one.

The fish sauce in this recipe is a great excuse to break out your favorite fish-shaped cookie cutter, and maybe even grab a cookie stamp that mimics the shape of scales, like the ones Nordic Ware makes. In addition to giving your fish shortbread cookies an even fishier look, stamping the dough creates pockets for the icing to build up.

Patis has a distinct aroma, but I urge you to consider this a strength, not a weakness. As a society, we have moved beyond pejorative connotations with pungent smells. You eat with all of your senses, so turning your nose away from those fermented aromas will only limit your experience. Adding a touch of fish sauce to your dessert is more than a gimmick. It gives the dish a layered complexity of flavor without any complicated techniques. Next time you grab a bottle of patis, don’t hesitate to add a twist to your dessert.