Vietnamese dipping sauce

I can still remember my first few months in Japan, my first time far away from Vietnam. I was 23, and I had only eaten Vietnamese food before. It was certainly an exciting time for me to learn new things, and enjoy real sushi, awesome sashimi, etc. But it was difficult to get used to the daily meals. They're similar to Vietnamese in that rice is the staple food, and soy sauce is a common ingredient. But I was not satisfied until I found a small bottle of fish sauce in an expensive department store with the help of my host family. Though it's changed in recent years, it was tough at that time to find Southern Asian ingredients in Hiroshima. It was a good learning time for me, and a springboard to more adventures in food later, when I traveled to Europe which has completely different food than Asia.

Anyway, I'd like to introduce "nước chấm", an all-purpose sauce that has fish sauce being as a main ingredient. It's almost always on the table in Vietnam, both at home and in restaurants. It's commonly used as a dipping sauce for spring rolls, Vietnamese pancakes, salad dressing, and so forth.

Ingredients: ( scant 1 1/2 cup)

1 scant cup sugar
1 cup water
1/4 cup fish sauce
2~3 small hot fresh Asian chile or jalapeno pepper, preferably red, seeded and finely chopped
juice from 2 limes
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

Method:

1) Combine water, sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar. Remove the pan from the heat, let it cool.

2) Stir in lemon juice, fish sauce, finely chopped red chile and garlic.

Serve at room temperature.

The sauce will keep, covered and refrigerated, for up to 2 weeks.