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Kaeng Khae (ແກງແຄ) – Lao Vegetable Soup with Betel Leaves
Kaeng Khae is a vegetable soup from Laos and northern Thailand that gets by without coconut milk. The flavor comes from a paste of dried chilies, shallots, lemongrass and krachai, a mild kind of ginger. You cook whatever the market offers, here pumpkin, beans, eggplant, mushrooms and bamboo. Wild betel leaves go in at the end and add a slightly peppery taste. With sticky rice it becomes a full meal.
Kaeng Khae (ແກງແຄ) – Lao Vegetable Soup with Betel Leaves
Laura Chen
4
25 minutes
20 minutes
120
Lao
Soup
Kaeng Khae is a Lao vegetable soup without coconut milk. You cook pumpkin, beans, eggplant, mushrooms and bamboo in a broth of chili paste and padaek and add wild betel leaves at the end. Compared with Kaeng Het with mushrooms and dill, it tastes stronger of chili and krachai. Eat it with sticky rice.
Ingredients
For the paste:
- 5 dried red chilies, soaked in warm water for 10 minutes
- 3 shallots
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1 stalk lemongrass, pale part only, sliced into rings
- 20 g krachai (fingerroot) or galangal
For the soup:
- 200 g pumpkin, in 2 cm cubes
- 150 g yardlong beans or green beans, in 4 cm pieces
- 200 g Thai eggplants or 1 small eggplant, quartered
- 150 g oyster mushrooms, torn
- 100 g canned bamboo shoots, in strips
- 20 g cha plu leaves (wild betel leaves) or young spinach
- 1 l water
- 1 tbsp padaek (Lao fermented fish sauce with pieces of fish)
- 2 tbsp fish sauce
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 10 g Thai basil, leaves picked
Instructions
- Pound the chilies, shallots, garlic, lemongrass and krachai in a mortar to a fine paste.
- Heat the oil in a pot and fry the paste for 2 minutes, until fragrant.
- Pour in the water, stir in the padaek and bring everything to a boil.
- Add the pumpkin and beans and cook for 8 minutes.
- Add the eggplant, mushrooms and bamboo shoots and cook for 6 more minutes, until the pumpkin is soft.
- Stir in the betel leaves and fish sauce and let the soup sit for 1 minute, until the leaves wilt.
- Fold in the basil and serve the soup with sticky rice.
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