Vegan “Fish Sauce” Mushroom, Kombu, and Black Garlic

Patis, or fish sauce, is so essential to Filipino cooking that some of us have been known to pack bottles of it on trips abroad and surreptitiously give a splash to foreign dishes. “No matter how strange or different the food, the patis gives it Filipino flavor,” the cultural historian Doreen Gamboa Fernandez wrote.

For vegans, I wanted to offer an alternative that still delivers the same deep funk. Simmering and then steeping kombu, shiitakes, and black garlic in water yields this