Feast on Vietnamese style honey ginger chicken
Over two years ago, when I first cooked a chicken dish seasoned with a combination of honey, lemon and ginger, I thought I created something original. In fact, I found it amusing that it was inspired by Halls candy — you know, the honey lemon flavored ones?
Little did I know that honey ginger dishes are common in Vietnam. There is honey ginger chicken, honey ginger prawns and honey ginger pork…
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Thai mussel soup with coconut milk
My 16-year-old daughter, Sam, adores mussels any way they’re cooked. But her 14-year-old sister does not touch mussels unless they were baked and topped with cheese. Until tonight. Oh, how she feasted on this soup! And she’s not even a fan of spicy dishes.
It’s a Thai dish but the similarity to the most common Filipino mussel soup is uncanny…
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Lemongrass (Cymbopogon)
Native to India and used as an herb in Asian cooking, its common names include lemon grass, lemongrass, barbed wire grass, silky heads, citronella grass, fever grass or Hierba Luisa. In the Philippines, it is known as tanglad. It is added to soups and stews, boiled to make tea and one of its species is the source of citronella oil used as insect repellent.
During the last few years, lemongrass received a lot of attention from the media when an agriculturist in Israel was swamped with cancer patients asking for lemongrass.
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Galangal (Galanga, Blue Ginger)
Galangal was something I used to associate exclusively with Indian cooking until I learned how important it is in Southeast Asian cooking too; in Thai cuisine, particularly, where it is sometimes known as Siamese ginger. Fresh galangal looks like ginger but the flesh is more white than yellow. Galangal is also much harder (tougher) than ginger. Neither do they taste alike since galangal has a dominant citrusy flavor. In places where galangal is not widely cultivated, it is sold in powdered form, pickled or in jars as crushed galangal (see photo).
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Thai chicken soup with coconut cream (tom kha gai)
A chicken soup with coconut cream that is known alternatively as tom kha gai, gai dom kha or tom khaa kai. The recipes vary but they all for the same Thai chicken soup with coconut cream, lemongrass, galangal and kaffir lime leaves. I tried it at a Thai restaurant last weekend, bought a Thai cookbook [...]
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