Chefs call it their “go-to” ingredient, the one they reach for when a dish is blah or bland or just isn’t coming together. Fish sauce, the pungent, tea-colored liquid that perfumes the cooking of Southeast Asia, has infiltrated Western kitchens. “If something doesn’t taste quite right,” says Donald Dellis, chef-owner of Grasshopper in Oakland, “fish sauce is often the ingredient it needs.”

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