Mainland Southeast Asia · Volume 42, The Tea Leaf, the Curry Oil and the Caravan Road
Kaeng Hang Le
Named directly for its Burmese ancestry, adopted as a prestige dish on the Lanna banquet table
Illustration
- Time
- 2 hours
- Researched
- 12 sources cited
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. About 2 hours.
Ingredients
- 500g to 1kg pork belly
- 50 to 100g kaeng hang le curry paste
- 80g garlic, whole, or 20g minced
- 60 to 70g ginger, sliced
- 80g tamarind concentrate, or 2 to 5 tbsp tamarind water
- 100g pickled garlic
- 80g roasted peanuts
- 80 to 100g palm sugar
Method
- Brown the pork belly, then add the curry paste and cook through until fragrant.
- Add the whole garlic, ginger, tamarind and palm sugar, and enough water to cover.
- Simmer gently, uncovered, until the sauce reduces and thickens and the pork is properly tender, an hour or more.
- Stir through the pickled garlic and roasted peanuts near the end, so they keep some texture rather than dissolving into the sauce.
What a modern chef changes
The Burmese-style souring named and kept deliberate, not softened toward the milder Lanna variant
No numbered rung, a naming discipline rather than a technique change.
Method
- State on the plate which version this is. A "Burmese-style" and a "Shan and Lanna-style" hang le exist side by side and are not the same dish under two names; this chapter's version is deliberately the sourer, saltier Burmese-associated one, and says so.
- Reduce the sauce further than instinct suggests, uncovered, so it clings to the pork rather than pooling thin around it.
- Add the pickled garlic and peanuts only in the final minutes, off the fiercest heat, so both keep a real bite against the softened pork.