Interchangeable ingredients, crunchy counterpoints: an orchestra of flavors that can lead to overeating!
If you have never tried Thai larb, you really have to. It’s not really too hard to make and the ingredients are so interchangeable. And of course the flavors are distinctly Thai—a little sweet, a little sour, a little spicy and a little salty. Which is everything you need to lead to overeating! Thankfully, the dish itself is quite healthy with the amount of green herbs in it that you can justify the overeating.
This isn’t your grandfather’s Chinese Chicken Salad recipe…
…probably because your grandfather never heard of Chinese chicken salad in his hey day. The Chinese chicken salad that we’re familiar with – shredded chicken, raw lettuce, crispy fried noodles, and a sweet, sesame-based dressing – wasn’t popular until the 1970’s.
The Chinese in Asia typically don’t eat raw-leaf lettuce salads. They prefer their greens cooked. Chinese chicken salad as we know it was probably invented in California as a “fusion” of Oriental flavors with Western ingredients.
Here’s another quick and easy dish I learned to make here in Kuching.
Stir-Fried Cangkuk Manis
Cangkuk Manis (“Chong-cook Ma-Niss”, meaning sweet leaf) or Mani chai in Hokkien is a vegetable that is very common here in Kuching. As a matter of fact, the same day that we arrived here and were introduced to paku, we also got introduced to Cangkuk Manis. Its texture when cooked is like spinach, but without the bitterness. This vegetable has a natural sweetness to it (which is why it’s name has the word “manis” – meaning sweet – in it).
Loving bell peppers is easy when stir-fried with chicken and black bean sauce.
When I was younger, there were certain vegetables that I didn’t care for—bittermelon, celery, watercress and bell peppers (specifically green bell peppers). These vegetables tasted bad to me except for watercress (that one I just didn’t like because it was so stringy—we mainly had it in soups and I could never chew it enough to swallow it).
When I met Nate, he had his own food dislikes but they didn’t match mine. I was incredulous that he didn’t like mayonnaise, bananas, and asparagus. Those were all things that I loved. So it didn’t come as too much of a surprise to me that the things he loved, I didn’t – especially bell peppers. And this particular dish of stir-fried chicken with bell peppers in black bean sauce is one of his favorites.
