Don't bother with the dried pandan leaves... always use fresh ones when
cooking as you'll lose the delicate flavours. Pandan leaves are most
commonly used in desserts but there are a few savoury uses for it. Marinate
large bite size pieces of chicken in your favourite fried chicken sauce eg.
fish sauce, soya sauce, garlic, ginger, etc. etc. Leave to stand for 1/2
hour etc. & use fresh pandan leaves to parcel wrap the chicken pieces
tightly. Deep fry the wrapped parcels until chicken is cooked & serve. The
chicken pieces will retain the delicate flavours of the pandan leaves. The
is a similar to the Chinese/HK Chinese version of paperbag chicken except it
smells & taste fragrant.

Lye water, borax, slate lime, etc. is often used in very small amounts(1/4
tsp portions max. etc.) in very old recipes for either as a setting agent or
to achieve a smooth finish in texture or sometimes included in a curing mix
for preserving foodstuff, so i was told. I've come across it in recipes like
bamboo leave wrapped dumplings, desserts, old dim-sum type doughs & also in
the curing mix for preserved eggs etc. These days, many people leave it out
altogether or sub. cornflour etc.

DC.



Kali > wrote in message
...
> Hi folks!
>
> I was trawling through the shelves of my favourite Chinese grocery story
> when I came upon bottles of Lye Water. Now, I know that lye is potassium
> carbonate. What I'd like to know is what is it used for? I found a
recipe
> for a Filipino brown rice cake called "Kusinta" on www.asiarecipe.com
that
> used a teaspoon of lye water. Is it something like the use of bicarbonate
> soda or "baking powder" in western cooking?
>
> Also, I came across a whole bin of dried pandanus (pandan) leaves, as well
> as a whole crew of pandan essences (some with bright green food colouring)
> and others that were clear. I know it's an ingredient of a lot of Asian
> sweets (thinking some of the Thai glutinous rice & coconut milk desserts
> here), but is it used in savoury foods a lot? I've been trying to find
> recipes via google, but I'm coming up with mostly sweet things.
>
> Does anyone have any recipes they'd care to post?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Kali
>
>