Readers helping readers helping readers — with The Advertiser as the conduit (and recipe tester) ... that's how this column works.

Some years ago we wrote a column answering a request for stir-fry sauce. Another reader responded not just with a sauce but with several recipes.

Last month Karen Crisler, a working mom, asked about a stir-fry sauce and Eleanor Henderson of Hilo came through with that old article.

And here's the base recipe. It's a little more complicated than some, with an interesting interaction of ingredients, but you can make it ahead of time and store it in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to three weeks. It makes enough for four meals for four, since you use about a cup in each recipe.

Feel free to consider this a flexible platform on which to dance in a dozen ways: Use dashi, mushroom or even beef broth. Low-sodium soy sauce is OK. Use half-and-half corn syrup and molasses or the new darling of the sweetening world, agave (cactus) syrup (found in health-food stores). In place of sherry, try sweet vermouth, sake, shaoshing (Chinese cooking wine) or sauterne. Instead of cider vinegar, Filipino-style vinegars (made from cane sap, palm sugar or coconut) would be interesting. Add more or less garlic and ginger (and you can get away with simple slicing and smashing it instead of grating it, if you wish). And for ground red pepper (cayenne), you could use a small spoonful of chili sauce (either ginger-garlic sauce or sambal oelek — maybe even ko chu jang) or even, if you have them in your yard, a minced, seeded Hawaiian chili pepper or some chili pepper water. And, finally, you could use arrowroot instead of cornstarch.

STIR FRY SAUCE