Oyster sauce salt, should be added to the sauce, since the oysters should provide all the savoury flavour. However, this method is prohibitively expensive. Many modern oyster sauces are thickened with cornstarch, flavoured with oyster essence or extract and darkened with caramel. Vegetarian oyster sauce prepared from mushrooms, often oyster mushrooms or shiitake mushrooms, is also popular and generally lower in price. It may contain more taste enhancers if less mushroom extract is used to reduce costs. Most of the oyster sauces available on the market contain added monosodium glutamate (MSG). In recent years MSG-free varieties can also be found. The taste
Flat bean Flat bean Flat beans, also known as helda beans, romano beans and "gavar fhali" in some Indian states, are a variety of "Phaseolus vulgaris" with edible pods that have a characteristic wide and flat shape. Flat beans are normally cooked and served as the whole pods, the same way as green beans. Like many other types of bean (see broad bean for example) they can also be dehusked or "shelled" and the whitish seeds dried and stored, but there is no incentive to grow them for this purpose as higher-yielding bean varieties are available. Modern flat bean varieties picked while