More substitutes

We all improvise when it comes to cooking. If an ingredient is not available, we try to find an alternative & if inspiration hits us, we might even concoct something wonderful. Admittedly I'm not very innovative when it comes to cooking. I tend to stick to tried & tested recipes.

I'm sure you all know how I feel about the prices of wine in Singapore. So what is one to do when the recipe calls for white wine ? Do you buy the cheapest bottle of wine & hope for the best ? In France, I never buy wine just for cooking. I will cook with whatever wine we have available - an unfinished bottle in the fridge & if there's none, I won't think twice about opening any one of the bottles that we have ie. a wine that we would drink.

So I'm eating my words when I said I wouldn't dream of substituting white wine with chinese wine. Well that day has come. As part of my quest to find Asian alternatives to expensive Western ones, it was time to test that out. Now that seafood is fresh & cheap over here, you know what I'm making all the time - yup seafood pasta. So instead of white wine, I decided to try adding shao xing bearing in mind that the latter is sweeter so it's best added sparingly.

It substitutes quite well but I must qualify that I don't have a chef's sophisticated tastebuds which means I didn't detect any significant difference. Have you tried it ? Did it work out for you ?