Cycle 3 – Item 290

21 (Sun) October 2012

Chicken & Bamboo in Green Curry

2.5

by me

at home

-Oksu, Seongdong, Seoul, Republic of Korea-

with W and DJ

If I hadn’t visited Phnom Penh earlier this month, then I probably wouldn’t have given a second thought to the news about the death of Cambodia’s King Sihanouk Norodom last week.  My final dinner in the country had taken place less than a kilometer from the Royal Palace where his body will lie in state for the next three months.  Which isn’t to say that the passing affected me in any profound way, with all due respect, but at least I read the article to the end.

Not necessarily for that reason, though it was something of an inspiration, I wanted to cook something Cambodian.  I’d acquired a cookbook on the local cuisine during my visit.  Unfortunately, I realized that I didn’t have the ingredients on hand to make any of the recipes without a trip to the store, and frankly I really wasn’t that invested in the project.  But I did have some pre-made paste for Thai kaang kiew wan (green curry), which seemed close enough to the Cambodian counterpart kroeung prahour.  The cookbook – I’ll give it prominent coverage in a future post – calls for the use of shallots in several dishes, so I added some here as garniture in a flimsy attempt to make the outcome a bit more Cambodian, however superficially.  Being sensitive to the historical/geopolitical divide between the two countries, no matter how similar their cultures may appear in certain ways, I hope in all sincerity that this post will be accepted in a positive spirit.

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See also RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)