ottawa foodies

Thus far I haven't successfully located tamarind sauce in any of the shops in Ottawa - ethnic ones or Loblaws. Does anyone know where I can get some?

I can usually find it at Vaishali's (Carling Rd, near Bayshore) or the Samosa Hut (Wellington/Richmond, near the 24 hour Loeb).

Chimi is right.

Most Indian food stores and many Asian Stores have Tamarind Concentrate in small plastic jars or ....

... or packages of de-shelled compressed tamarind pods.

One needs to mix with hot/boiling water and squish out the seeds and any heavy fibres before use.

I prefer this style because I get a more authentic tastey product for my Chana Masala or Pad Thai.

After re-reading your original post, Big Mouth, I see you are looking for Tamarind Sauce.

You may mean the tamarind sauce one sometimes gets with Indian appetisers (Samosa's, Bhaji etc.).

If that's the case, you can find premade tamarind sauce in ketchup shaped bottles. It's somewhat rare because most people will make there own. It's soooo easy.

Here is a typical recipe.

www.epicurious.com

It calls for jaggery palm sugar . Yumm yumm !!

I prefer the block of compressed tamarind to the concentrate. I think the concentrate is less fruity, more acidic, and a bit too caramel-y--almost tastes like balsamic vinegar to me.

I've looked as well for tamarind sauce at Loblaw's...scouring the shelves for about an hour, no lie. So I went to an asian grocery store on Ogilvie...the name completely escapes me now but it's beside the Mandarin Ogilvie restaurant in a mini mall. I ended up getting not tamarind sauce but the paste that Captain Caper is talking about, mistakenly thinking I could use it the same way in my pad thai I was making that night. WRONG! I didn't know to dilute it and used it as the recipe called for....it was just all clumpy and not very appetizing. I mean, the flavor was good but clumps of it in some bites wasn't.

How much hot/boiling water would one use per serving of tamarind paste?

You can buy the actual tamarind sauce at Vaishali's, last time I saw a Knorr branded bottle of it along with a few others.

there are two types of tamarind sauces sold at the indian grocery store
in bells corners (sorry I forgot the name, but in the same mall as Haveli).
They have a spicy version (which I have not tried) and the traditional sweet/sour for dipping your samosa's in :)

Grace om Bamk near Nepean has it
Most stores in Chinatown has it
UniMart on Montreal Rd has it

I picked up a container of "Cooking Tamarind Concentrate" at the Chinese-Japanese-Thai market next to Mandarin Ogilvie (on Ogilvie Road close enough to St. Laurent Mall), and am really glad I read this thread before using it full-strength! Though the word "concentrate" ought to be a clue...

I just went to Thana, a small Indian etc. grocery store on Bank (near Gilmour corner). They had lots of jars of tamarind sauce, different kinds too I believe.

Tamarind paste comes in a block and looks a bit like a block of pressed dates. You can find it easily in Chinatown--the Kowloon Market for example has it. It's about .69 cents for a small block. You need to soak this in hot water and sieve it before using.

i'm almost certain i bought some tamarind (the same in Captain's photo) at the Loblaws on Richmond Rd. Perhaps its a bit hit 'n miss, but they seem to be bringing back some of the Asian ingredients (such as the Vietnamese chili-garlic pastes) they stopped stocking when they went through that identity crisis a yr or so ago (as to whether they're a grocer vs. a dept store).