Substitute ingredients that made the product better than the original

[nickrey]

I recently went to cook some bok choy in oyster sauce only to find out that I had run out of the sauce.

With time being a limiting factor, I rifled through my supplies of ready made sauces, choosing some ready-made ponzu sauce as a potential substitute.

I separated the leaves and stir fried the bok choy with some garlic and ginger. This was finished with the ponzu.

The acid/sour+salty components in the ponzu complemented the bitterness in the bok choy perfectly. I liked it more than the equivalent dish made with oyster sauce. Next step will be to make it with home-made ponzu made with yuzu.

Has anyone else substituted an ingredient/ingredients and found that the resulting product was better than the original?

[huiray]

Actually, I've been using "ponzu sauce" as a dressing for my blanched veggies instead of oyster sauce - depending on my mood - for quite a while. It's nice. But for me I wouldn't say it is always better; rather, it is an alternative that one could say is more appealing on some days. These are the commercial bottles of soysauce-ponzu, that is. I've used the lemon version, the lime version, and a mixed citrus^¶ version.

^¶Lemon + sudachi + yukou + yuzu + daidai orange.

Edited March 23, 2013 by huiray (log)