Culinary Adventures with Camilla

This year, Wendy of  A Day in the Life on the Farm  kicked off her new group: Soup Saturday Swappers. And she is also hosting our April theme which is Root Vegetables. When I started thinking about root vegetables, all the usual suspects popped into my mind. I considered a variation of my Roasted Parsnip Soup Topped with Candied Bacon ; I really thought about redoing my Roasted Parsnip-White Chocolate Soup since that was done early in my blogging life and definitely needs to be rewritten! I have always been enamored with the color of Roasted Beet Soup . And, while the root itself is unattractive, I love the creaminess of celery root in a bowl full of Cream of Celeriac Soup . So, with all those favorites in mind, I decided to go a completely different direction. No surprise there, right? It's all about the adventure! I wanted to track down lotus root and make my version of a traditional Chinese Soup,  Ling Ngau Tong which is   a lotus root and peanut soup....

It's Spring Break this week, so I thought I would still do some tabletop traveling, but let someone else do the cooking. At least that was my intent. And while it worked for the meal, the flavors were so amazing that I decided that I will actually have to dig up some recipes and give this country a go when we get home. With a trip to the Museum of California in Oakland planned, I did some research and found a Cambodian restaurant - Phnom Penh House - nearby for this tabletop adventure. Authentic food + convenient location = perfect Spring Break "cooking" solution as far as I was concerned! Jake ordered the KARY KHMER, boneless chicken breast meat, potatoes & bamboo shoot cooked in red curry I opted for the MERM CHHOUK SALAD, lotus root salad with peanuts and prawns We also had NOUM KREAP JEAN (ground pork, shredded carrot, cabbage, bean thread, & black pepper, rolled in a thin rice paper then deep fried),   MOARN ANG KREUN (chicken charbroiled with lemong...