Cooking With Exotic Ingredients

  I love cooking and the type of cooking requires that I use some rather exotic ingredients such as lemon grass, galangal, dried mango powder, roasted red pepper paste, green curry, red curry, black sesame seeds, etc.

Yes, I love Asian influenced cooking.  I found two ways to cook eggplant that are awesome.  One involves coconut milk, roasted red pepper paste, sweetened soy sauce and broth, while the other involves lime juice, lemon grass, garlic, ginger, oil and soy sauce.  Both are so good.

Understand, I live in a place where it is so hard to get most ingredients so I have to shop online and have them mailed out to me.  I love that I can order these exotic ingredients.   I bought a box of traditional Indian spices so I can make all the Indian dishes I want.  I have a cabinet full of ginger, garlic, and red pepper flakes so I can make Kim Chee for myself and coworkers.  I absolutely love Kim Chee in rice or soup.  Ohhhh yum.

I was over at the Philippino store the other day, just before I left the big city to head out and I discovered they had instant coconut milk.  You add water and cook.  That is so cool because those cans get heavy and I was able to purchase 40 packets to bring out in my luggage.  They also had frozen Kaffer leaves, galangal roots and a couple other things.  I put them in a small portable ice chest to bring out. 

I am eating so well right now.  I love getting the food I like.