Laos – Khao Piak Sen

by Dwi Lias Susanti

Happy New Year
We already at the end of 2020. In a couple more days, we will be entering the year 2021. Many things happen in 2020, even if we can not celebrate New Year’s eve because of the Covid-19 pandemic, we still have to be grateful for every blessing we had. Speaking of New Year celebration, not all countries celebrating New Year on first January. Some countries have different date calculations. Some of them are Chinese or Saudi Arabia. Their calendar counts are using the evolution of the moon. This different calculation makes Chinese and Arabic has different New Year date.

In Southeast Asia, there is a country that has different date calculations. That country is Laos whom celebrating its New Year’s eve on 14 – 16 April every year. They determine 13th April as the last day of the year. Visiting Laos in April will become your best choice. There will be many celebrations during that month. Tourists can enjoy the water wars, praying in the temple, and cultural events. In April, you may also taste every Laos culinary that rarely available in the other month.

One of the dishes is Khao Piak Sen. A rice noodle pours with beef or chicken broth with various seafood and fresh vegetables with a thick savory taste. For the protein, Khao Piak Sen use sliced chicken liver or sliced pig belly with lemon squeeze juice. To cook Khao Piak Sen, you need to prepare the noodle and the broth by yourself, but it is not hard to prepare those two ingredients. All you need is to follow the recipe below.

Chicken broth Ingredient

• 1 chicken breast, cut into bite-size
• 50 gram of chicken liver, sliced
• 1 liter of water
• 1 teaspoon fish soy sauce
• 3 sheet lime leaves
• 2 cm of galangal, crushed

Grounded spice ingredient

• 15 pieces of dried chili, boil with hot water for 5 minute
• 5 pieces red chili
• 5 pieces of shallot
• 3 clove garlic
• 1 cm of ginger
• 2 stick of lemongrass
• ½ teaspoon of shrimp paste
• 1 tablespoon of palm sugar
• 1 tablespoon of dried shrimp, soak with hot water

Rice noodle ingredient

• 100 gram rice flour
• 25 grams of tapioca flour
• 1 piece of egg
• 250 ml of water
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 5 tablespoons of cooking oil

Rice noodle preparation

1. Mix rice flour, tapioca flour with egg and salt.
2. Pour water slowly while stirring the mixture.
3. Prepare a flat cooking pan, pour two tablespoons of the rice noodle dough, flatten as thin as possible.
4. Remove and sliced to make noodle shape.
5. Repeat the process for all the rice noodle dough.

Chicken broth preparation

1. Boil chicken breast with water.
2. Add galangal, lime leaves, and soy fish sauce.
3. Cook for 10 minutes.

How to cook

1. Stir fry grounded spice with two tablespoon cooking oil.
2. Add chicken broth. Cook until the chicken becomes tender.
3. add sliced chicken liver
4. Prepare a bowl of rice noodles, pour the chicken broth.
5. Khao Piak Sen ready to be served.