Dried Apricot and Carrot Salad on Betel Leaves

Lulu's aunt, Sara, gave Daddy a betel leaf plant a few months ago. It has grown from a small vine into a prolific producer of fragrant leaves. Daddy loves chewing areca nuts wrapped in a betel leaf. It's very popular in India (paan parag) as well as Vietnam (trầu). In much of Southeast Asia, betel leaves are used to make a salad.

For the shredded carrot salad I made today, I decided to use the fresh betel leaves as a serving dish of sorts. To the shredded carrots, I added diced dried apricots and a fresh, thinly shredded kaffir lime leaf. The combination of the ingredients worked very well together. Betel leaves have a peppery taste and the kaffir lime has a nice citrus-y aroma. In keeping with the Asian theme, I made a peanut and tamarind dressing to brighten up the dish and tie all the flavors together.

Kaffir Lime Ginger Glaze Recipe

I have received many requests for the kaffir lime ginger glaze recipe. I keep forgetting to post it.

The story behind this glaze is kind of funny. I had just made a sweet and sour soup and my mother-in-law came into the kitchen to help clean up. She saw the leftover kaffir lime leaves, picked them up and was about to throw them in the trash. Even though we get our kaffir lim leaves from our garden, it felt like a waste. I shrieked and told her, I told her that I was going to use them. She asked me how I planned on using the leaves since we weren't making any more soup. I had to come up with something fast, so I said that I would use them in the glaze for the apricot tarts that were in the oven.

I added a little ginger to the syrup to balance out the citrus-y flavor of the kaffir lime leaves and I incorporated a little cornstarch to the syrup to get a thicker consistency because typically I use fruit jellies as a glaze. It turned out wonderfully.

Canh Chua Ca (Vietnamese Sweet and Sour Fish and Pineapple Soup)

Can chua cá literally means sour fish soup in Vietnamese.The composition of the soup is the Vietnamese equivalent of tom yum Thai soup.  The sour flavor is from the kaffir lime leaf and tamarind powder and the sweetness is from the crushed pineapple.

Recently, I made this soup for our dinner guests. I served it with a side bowl of steamed jasmine rice. At the end of the meal, I was surprised to see all the bowls completely empty, given that the flavors are somewhat unusual. But they seemed to love it, so I'm guessing you might as well.

Vegetarian Tom Yum Thai Soup

Today was a very cold and rainy day in Northern California, the Asian New Year is coming and I don't think the family is going to attend any of the festivities because of the weather.

A couple of the girls are sick and I thought that a warm broth would do them good.

Thai soup is a very good first course if you want to do an Asian theme dinner. It's light and very tasty. The soup is an amazing contrast of spicy, sweet, savory and sour flavors.

Enjoy!