I was inspired to create this dish after I watched on AZCENTRAL.COM the “Killer Dish” not sure but I think it was by Food Critic Dominic Armato all photos were by Michael Chow. The above photo is my inspiration by me. In the video I watched a chef from our local Cambodian Restaurant Reathrey Sekong made a Cha Kreung paste. The flavoring paste was made by pounding in a mortar with a pestle a combination of turmeric, lime leaves, lemon grass, galangal, shallots and garlic. They added peppers, asparagus, oil, chicken to a very hot pan and then added flavoring paste (the Kreung) vegetables, sugar, fish sauce and red onions. The mixture got finished with sliced lime leaves. I didn’t finish my mixture with lime leaves because my lime leaves were very tough even when I removed the vain in the leaf I thought that they were too tough to eat completely raw.

I made a good size batch of the paste…..not sure on how far it will go..but I like the taste of it with vegetables. Latter I will do this with chicken.

Here are the vegetables with that taste and I thought the combination of tapioca, Israeli couscous and peas would be perfect………I think they are……..These of course are NOT TRADITIONAL to this flavor but I think they work.

I think this paste might work as a marinade for chicken so I’m giving that a try with the addition of maybe some lime juice, a little salt and sugar.

I pretty much winged this recipe so I don’t know if I did what exactly the Cambodian Chef did…

I think I did around……

1 teaspoon turmeric

30 lime leaves with veins removed

7 – 3 in bottoms of lemongrass with hard outers removed – sliced extra thin on mandolin

galangal – 1.5 oz sliced paper thin on mandolin – mine was very woody and strong tasting..was going to use more but didn’t…..

shallots 5 oz. sliced paper thin on mandolin

4 Thai Chile peppers – sliced thin….this didn’t add heat….just flavor

garlic confit that I do for sous-vide cooking and keep frozen…. and I used 3 ounces

Maybe a lb of broccoli I used the florets and trimmed the stem and sliced stem into strips.

Used maybe 9 mini bell peppers and cut them in strips

Used 1/2 a large sweet onion – cut in strips

I sautéed the broccoli and added the paste and a little oil while I broiled the onions and peppers tlll they charred. Added a splash of sugar and red boat fish sauce to the vegetables and then added the prepared tapioca, couscous and peas. I think this taste very good and most people will also think the same.

This is very aromatic and delicious. A day latter I marinated three very large chicken quarters with the paste for about 24 hours, rinsed off chicken and blotted dry. Roasted them off with more aromatics and the chicken was developed and super moist with delicious flavors and was served with more of these vegetables.

I think most people would enjoy this.