Burmese Ginger Salad

Southeast Asian salads from Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Burma (at least these are the ones that I am familiar with) share common ingredients and flavor in my opinion, such as lemon juice, peanuts, fish sauce, cilantro, shrimp, and more.  The following ginger salad recipe is no exception.  I have an earlier post for Vietnamese Lotus Stem Salad recipe in this blog as well if you are interested.

Who would have thought of using ginger as one of the main ingredients in a salad, I have always use it as a flavoring ingredient in steam fish, stews, or stir fry but never in a salad.  When I was first introduced to it by my friend, Jasmine, who was born in Burma, I liked it right away.  It gives a very different aroma, texture and flavor to the salad that I never had before.  Of course, there are variations of ginger salad recipe but this one is Jasmine's version of it and I have made this salad many times over.

Braised Tofu With Green Onion

This is one of my family favorite vegetarian dishes.  It only has two main ingredients with few seasonings for braising.  Needless to say, this recipe is another one that is easy and simple to concoct when you don't have much time to cook.  My sister told me that she read somewhere in a Chinese newspaper saying that tofu should not be cooked with green onion.  It has to do with some kind of yin-yang energy balance in the body when the two ingredients are combined.  I have not heard from anybody else about it and we really love the taste and flavor of green onion tofu, so we still make this tofu whenever we have craving for it.  If I find out more concrete information about this issue, I will update this post accordingly.  In the meantime, my family will continue to cook and enjoy this simple and delicious dish.