Dish
Kroeung
គ្រឿង
Family of pounded Khmer herb and spice pastes that form the flavour base of many Cambodian dishes.
Kroeung (គ្រឿង) is the family of pounded herb and spice pastes that gives many Cambodian dishes their base flavor.[1] Soups, curries, steamed dishes and marinades across Khmer cooking begin with it.[2]
Cultural context
Eight ingredients recur in most kroeung: lemongrass, the zest and leaves of the makrut lime, galangal, turmeric, garlic, shallots, dried red chilies, and rhizomes such as lesser galangal, fingerroot and Kaempferia galanga.[1] They are ground together in a heavy mortar and pestle.[1] The chef and author Chef Nak counts kroeung among the foundations of Cambodian cooking.[2] Cambodian homes and restaurant kitchens often make it fresh, and a cook's kroeung is a matter of pride.[3]
Ingredients and preparation
One method begins by pounding the galangal, then adds lime peel and leaves, lemongrass, turmeric, garlic and shallots in turn until the paste is smooth.[2] In many kitchens today a food processor does the work of the mortar, though the ingredients are still chopped fine and ground together.[1]
Cooks sort kroeung by color. Red kroeung starts from dried chilies, soaked and seeded, with the lemongrass and lime thinly sliced and the fresh rhizomes diced before pounding. Green kroeung uses more lemongrass leaf than stalk and may add rhizomes, cinnamon, galangal and turmeric. Yellow kroeung is the everyday paste, used in dishes such as samlor machu kroeung, a sour soup of pork, winter melon or other vegetables with tamarind.[1] A paste's raw color can change in the pot, so the finished dish does not always show it.[1]
A green paste made with prahok, the fermented fish paste, and without cinnamon becomes teuk kroeung, a dip served with vegetables and rice.[1]
History and origins
Many of the spices reached Cambodia through trade with India by about the second century.[4] The curry pastes of Khmer royal cooking took shape through links that ran from South India through Java, with lemongrass and galangal added to the mix.[4] In the time of the Khmer Empire, Khmer cooking spread into parts of present-day Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Indonesia.[4] That shared history helps explain the likeness between kroeung and some Thai curry pastes; the Cambodian yellow base is marked by fresh turmeric.[3]
Regional and household variations
Kroeung falls into two broad kinds. An individual kroeung is made for one dish, such as the roasted ground rice added for samlor kakou or the lime leaves used in fish amok when turmeric is left out. Royal kroeung is a more standard paste, based on those used in royal dishes, which may add or substitute coriander and makrut lime leaves.[1] Cambodian recipe tradition names five pastes in regular use: yellow, green, red, k'tis and the saraman kroeung of Saraman curry.[5]
Outside Cambodia, cooks adapt. Makrut limes are hard to find beyond Southeast Asia, so the leaves stand in for the zest.[1] Powdered turmeric may replace fresh, extra garlic may replace galangal, and lime and lemon zest may stand in for the leaves.[6] Nite Yun, the chef of the Oakland restaurant Nyum Bai, notes that kroeung keeps for months in the freezer.[6]
Preparations and recipes
- Chef Nak, HOPE: Delicious, Simple and Fast Cambodian Cooking
- Hand-pounded lemongrass paste built up aromatic by aromatic, made in a batch large enough for several dishes.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Wikipedia, Kroeung
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Chef Nak, Cambodian Kroeung Recipe: Khmer Lemongrass Paste
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Grantourismo Travels, Kroeung Cambodian Curry Paste: A Cambodian Cuisine Essential (May 2014)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Wikipedia, Cambodian cuisine
- ↑ Grantourismo Travels, Cambodian Recipes to Learn to Cook (August 2020)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Sunset Magazine, Cambodian spice paste (kroeung)