Sa lor Ma Chiu Karung

I am not going to write a lot about this soup only that it is an exceptional Cambodian dish that I have ever learn to make. In the Khmer culture if you can cook this soup, then it meant you can cook! The reason being that it require some time to prepared the herbs and spices to get ready for this soup. Of course, once you got the basic herbs and spices down, you can most certainly cook most Khmer dishes due to it similar ingredients and methods.
Also I would like to add that even though the taste should be very sharp with it perfect harmony of sweet and sour, every family will have their version of meat and vegetable preferences. I do mine version by observing and trying many different kind before deciding that this is the flavor I set out to accomplished.
Overall, I like mine thick and with lots of chewy texture meat and tendon. Sometime I would add beef tripe too, to make it taste super yummy. Mostly importantly bold and sharp is the word to best describe the flavor of this soup.



Ingredients:

1 Lb beef stew meat cut into cube
½ Lb beef tendon cut into thumb size pieces
½ Cup grind lemon grass (about 6 to 8 whole)
½ Tsp of turemic powder or small thumb size fresh one, grind
¼ Cup fish sauce
1 Tbsp of vegetable oil
1 Tsp kosher salt
1 Tbsp of oyster sauce
2 Tbsp of chicken soup flavor powder
4 Clove garlic
4 Jalapeno
1 Handful of morning glory cut three time.
1/2 Cup kaffir lime leaves grind
2 Tbsp of tamarind soup flavor powder
1 Winter melon gourd
6 Round Asian egg plants
1 Cup celery sliced diagonally
Water

Methods:

1. Clean and cut the beef and tendon, set aside in refrigerator.
2. Finely cut the lemon grass, lime leaves, fresh galaga, garlic, fresh termine and put in the grinder and grind until fine and almost paste like. If using the dry version, put in the grinder to blend too.
3. Heat a 5 quarts pot to hot. Add the vegetable oil to hot. Add the herb mixture, oyster sauce, fish sauce, salt and stir until lightly golden.
4. Add the meat and tendon and enough water to cover the meat.
5. Bring it to boil and turn to heat to medium and let it shimmer until tender. I let mine sit for 1 hour and 20 minutes, because you want the tendon to tender but not over cook the meat.
6. Ten minutes before it done, add the whole jalapeno, slice celery, melon and egg plant and shimmer.
7. When the vegetable is semi, add the morning glory and turn off and remove from the stove. Don’t overcooked the vegetable, because it will continue to cook even if remove from heat when it in soup form.