Sour notes

I post a lot of food photos on Facebook. They usually link to this blog, but the truth is, only a handful of my “friends” ever make it here (some do not even bother to read the captions). Heck, the reaction I get the most is, “You mean you cooked those yourself? For real?!?”

That said, my mother often gets comments along the lines of “Wow, you must eat pretty good,” given said photos. So then she gets to say it isn’t all that. In fact, she still can’t get over the tom kha I served for lunch a week ago. It’s my favorite Thai soup and I was mighty pleased with my version, but she and my father (especially him) pronounced it unpalatable.

Must be the kaffir lime leaves, I remember thinking. I found them at Metro Ayala in Cebu, under the label Green Organics (09335506100, in case you are interested). Like “regular” lime fruit, supply of these leaves are at best erratic (even in Manila, I gather), so you can imagine my excitement at the discovery. I hate to trot out the word “authentic” (my thoughts on that, here), but tom kha (or tom yum, for that matter) just doesn’t smell like the real McCoy without kaffir lime leaves, which are citrusy without actually being sour.

I know: tom yum and tom kha are sour (both are Thai versions of sinigang, with coconut cream added to the latter). My point is that kaffir lime leaves accentuate the sourness by mere suggestion of their redolence, and my folks (Pa, especially) do not have much tolerance for anything beyond mildly sour. Not that I make my usual sinigang any sourer than I did the tom kha — just not with kaffir lime leaves. And that was why, last night, I purposely made myself late for dinner, because I threw some into the nilagang baboy (pork soup). I could not help myself. There should be a Compulsive Cooks Anonymous.

But what did I know? They liked it. Or at least Ma did. “That soup smelled great,” she said, “like suwâ!” Then I sat down to eat, and with one sip of the broth decided I shouldn’t have put in those leaves, after all. The smell was distracting. Now that I think of it, perhaps it subliminally primed my taste receptors for sinigang, then failed to deliver on the olfactory promise. Still, it was Ma’s mention of suwâ that intrigued me, had me thinking of biasong, a close relative of kaffir lime.

I have only ever encountered biasong as fruit, but what are the chances its leaves smell like kaffir lime’s? On my next market visit, I asked my suki to tell her supplier to include some leaves with the next delivery. Better yet, she informed me the supplier is local, and so, presumably, are the biasong.

I bought some, mostly to re-acquaint myself with the flavor/scent. Biasong is incredibly sour, limiting its culinary use to ginamós (fermented fish) and seafood kinilaw. I’ve read somewhere that its juice is also used in tom yum, but I tell you, I have tried it in sinigang and will not be doing so ever again. I will likely end up using it as shampoo, like some old-timers still do. Kaffir lime fruit, on the other hand, is regarded as too acidic to use in food — save for the zest, which is added to curry paste.

Of course! Sparingly used, biasong zest could probably stand in for kaffir lime leaves. It smells close enough — who would be the wiser? Not anyone I know. (Well, except Kim, who is Thai, and cooks.) But I don’t dare so soon, certainly not with my parents. I don’t need them to enthusiastically like my tom kha, just eat it — and if it means doing away with a basic or traditional ingredient for them to do so, then so be it. Now that’s as real as it gets.