Egg Foo Young Recipe for the Original Cantonese Crispy Omelette. What to Cook This Weekend. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

What to Cook This Weekend – Egg Foo Young, Samlor Korko and Southern Fried Chicken

This post may contain paid links. If you make a purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission.

My suggestions for what to cook this weekend include everything from our egg foo young recipe for breakfast on Saturday for the original Cantonese style egg foo young and a samlor korko recipe for Cambodian stirring pot soup to a Cape Malay chicken curry recipe for a richly spiced curry from Cape Town and an Australian chef’s recipe for Nashville style Southern fried chicken.

I’ve been cooking so many Australian and European dishes lately, especially soups, as I’ve been homesick and in need of comfort food, that now I’m craving Asian food. So most of my ideas for you for what to cook this weekend are from our home here in Southeast Asia, from omelettes and soups to steamed fish curries.

I hope you find some inspiration in this round-up of recipes, but if none of these dishes appeal, do check out our collection of our most popular recipes in September, which is a compilation of our most searched-for and most-visited recipes, as well as our round-up of best vegetarian recipes, which I compiled for World Vegetarian Day on Saturday.

And if you’re in Australia, where there’s a football grand final this weekend, do browse the collection I shared last weekend of 40 recipes for Australian football final snacks, from dips and finger food to sausage rolls and meat pies, along with more hearty meals, such as burgers and curries to soak up all those celebratory beers.

If you’re a first-time visitor to Grantourismo, What to Cook this Weekend is a very random weekly-ish recipe series with ideas for often easy, occasionally challenging, but always memorable weekend meals. We publish the series weekly, unless life gets in the way.

My weekend cooking suggestions for you might include dishes we’re cooking here at home here in Cambodia, which we think you might enjoy, recipes that we’re developing and testing out for our various cookbooks, or recipes we’d like to cook if we had the time, which we think you’d like to try.

All of our recipes come from our recipe archives, which are jam-packed with hundreds of recipes: from family recipes and nostalgic recipes from our childhoods to recipes for dishes from around the world that we learnt to cook on our travels and dishes that we cook at home here in Siem Reap.

Now, before you scroll down to my suggestions for what to cook this weekend, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting our work by buying us a coffee. We’ll put that coffee money toward cooking ingredients for recipe testing.

Another way to support the site is by making a small donation to our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon or purchase something on Amazon, such as these James Beard award-winning cookbooks, cookbooks by Australian chefs, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, cookbooks for culinary travellers, travel books to inspire wanderlust, gifts for Asian food lovers, picnic lovers and travellers who love photography. We may earn a small commission but you won’t pay any extra.

And lastly, you could use our links to book accommodation, rent a car or campervan or motorhome, buy travel insurance, or book a tour on Klook or Get Your Guide. Again, we may earn a small commission but you won’t pay extra. Lastly, you could also shop our Grantourismo store at Society 6 for plenty of great gifts designed with Terence’s photography. Now let me share my ideas as to what to cook this weekend.

What to Cook This Weekend from Egg Foo Young to Southern Fried Chicken

Saturday Breakfast – Egg Foo Young Recipe for the Original Cantonese Style Crispy Omelette Fu Yong Dan

I’m making our egg foo young recipe for breakfast on Saturday. The recipe makes the original Cantonese style egg foo young, a deliciously crispy omelette filled with pork, spring onions and bean sprouts, that originated in Southern China in the 18th century during the Ching Dynasty.

This egg foo young recipe or fuyong dan recipe does not make the make the Chinese-American egg foo young which is a popular Chinese restaurant takeout dish of crispy pancake-like omelettes drizzled in gravy.

We mostly make this egg foo young with savoury pork mince instead of char siu pork and it’s absolutely delicious. Don’t get us wrong, we adore char siu or Chinese barbecued pork and have had a char sui pork recipe on the site for many years. Pork is fantastic here in Cambodia and it’s affordable.

But we’re still in a pandemic after all and we all have ground pork in the freezer and making char siu pork might be something of a luxury when minced pork is more readily available, hence our collection of ground pork recipes. Plus not everybody has the luxury of time these days and we find ourselves making dishes with minced pork more than barbecue pork.

We shared our egg foo young recipe or Cantonese fu yong dan recipe as part of our Weekend Eggs series on recipes for quintessential breakfast eggs dishes around the world.

Egg Foo Young Recipe for the Original Cantonese Style Crispy Omelette Fu Yong Dan

Saturday Lunch – Samlor Korko Recipe for Cambodian Stirring Pot Soup

The weather is chilly here in Siem Reap right now so I’m making this samlor korko recipe for Cambodian stirring pot soup. Believed to be a very old dish, dating to the Khmer Empire, for many this is Cambodia’s national dish.

It’s a rustic, unpretentious, nourishing stew-like soup brimming with vegetables and fruit and featuring Cambodia’s most quintessential ingredients, prahok and kroeung.

To make the green kroeung, follow the yellow kroeung recipe but also use the lemongrass leaves, not only the stalks. You could leave out the galangal if you can’t get hold of it. Some Cambodian green kroeung recipes include galangal and some don’t so don’t get too hung up on this.

Prahok, Cambodia’s famous fermented fish paste, is another key ingredient of this samlor korko recipe. Prahok is tricky to find outside Cambodia. Many Cambodian chefs in other countries will make their own.

Look for it at an Asian supermarket or grocery store or call your nearest Cambodian restaurant and see if they have some that the owner’s grandmother makes that they might want to sell! If you can’t get hold of any, use fish sauce.

We originally published this samlor korko recipe as part of a Cambodian soup recipe series, which kicked off with one of my favourite Cambodian soups, sour beef soup with morning glory, which I followed up with a pork, pineapple and coconut milk soup-cum-stew and a cold ‘outside the pot’ soup recipe, popular in summertime.

Traditional Samlor Korko Recipe for a Hearty Healthy Cambodian Stirring Pot Soup

Saturday Dinner – Cape Malay Chicken Curry Recipe for a Richly Spiced Curry from Cape Town

Our Cape Malay chicken curry recipe makes a richly spiced curry from Cape Town, South Africa, inspired by the aromatic chicken curry we learnt to make in a Cape Malay cooking class in colourful Bo-Kaap, the heart of Cape Malay culture in Cape Town.

Eaten with aromatic Cape Malay yellow rice, buttery roti, and simple tomato, onion and cucumber sambals, it’s an incredibly delicious curry that you’ll be sorry to finish. Our tip: make double the amount, as it tastes even better as leftovers the next day.

Gently spiced, the Cape Malay chicken curry is a cousin of the classic Cape Town lamb stew called tomato bredie. They’re dishes that locals here in Southeast Asia would describe as ‘same same but different’, sharing a lot of similar spices.

As with many chicken curries, as long as the bulk of the meat is cooking in the sauce you can easily cook the curry for up to two hours. When it comes to the potatoes, we cook these separately. Sometimes I’ll even cook them in some chicken stock and water to add more flavour.

Our reason for not cooking the potatoes in the curry is that starch from the potatoes can ‘muddy’ the flavour of the curry – a tip we learnt from chef David Thompson.

Cape Malay Chicken Curry Recipe for a Richly Spiced Curry from Cape Town, South Africa

 

Sunday Breakfast – Authentic Nom Banh Chok Recipe for Cambodia’s Beloved Khmer Noodles

I picked up some freshly-made nom banh chok noodles from the markets today so for breakfast on Sunday, I’m making this authentic nom banh chok recipe for Cambodia’s beloved ‘Khmer noodles’, nom banh chok samlor proher. You can use dried vermicelli if you can’t get hold of fresh noodles.

Nom banh chok refers to both the fresh ever-so-lightly-fermented rice noodles that are still made daily by hand by artisanal noodle makers all over Cambodia, just as they’ve always been made, as well as the delicious breakfast noodle dish, comprised of the rice noodles doused in a curry, gravy or soup, served with seasonal vegetables, and garnished with fragrant herbs, foraged leaves, and edible flowers.

Cambodia’s national dish for so many Cambodians – indicative by the fact that locals translate the dish to foreigners as ‘Khmer noodles’ – nom banh chok has long been ‘Cambodia in a bowl’ for me and is perhaps my most favourite Cambodian food and one of my favourite Southeast Asian noodle dishes.

Centred around Cambodia’s indigenous noodles, nom banh chok showcases Cambodia’s much-loved ingredients – rice, prahok, fish, coconut milk, palm sugar, seasonal vegetables, and kroeung, the spice paste distinguished by aromatics such as lemongrass and kaffir lime that are so intrinsic to Cambodian cuisine.

Authentic Nom Banh Chok Recipe for Cambodia’s Beloved Khmer Noodles

Sunday Lunch – Southern Fried Chicken Recipe for Spicy Nashville Style Chicken

For Sunday lunch, I like the idea of making this Southern fried chicken recipe for Belles Hot Chicken’s spicy Nashville style chicken. Australian chef Morgan McGlone learnt to make it during his time in the USA’s South, home to some of the world’s best fried chicken. We use it in everything from chicken burgers to e chicken fried rice.

This Southern fried chicken recipe by Belles Hot Chicken’s chef Morgan McGlone makes some of the best fried chicken in the spicy Nashville-style of chicken outside of the USA. Australian chef Morgy McGlone learnt to make it during his time in the South, where he immersed himself in learning how to make and perfect the South’s famous hot chicken.

As you’d expect from a chef who immersed himself in learning how to cook fried chicken in the USA, Morgy’s Southern-style fried chicken recipe is the real deal. Boneless skin-on chicken thighs are coated in seasoned flour that forms a ‘glue’ on the chicken and then the pieces are deep fried to get a crispy skin.

The fried chicken pieces are then dipped in a spicy oil mixture that the chef calls ‘Masala chicken fat’ but the real secret to why this Southern fried chicken recipe makes the best fried chicken is the final spicy seasoning that elevates this fried chicken to the next level.

This recipe makes us a big batch of succulent spicy chicken pieces that we’ll tuck into with crunchy fries or spicy potato wedges, eat in chicken burgers,

Southern Fried Chicken Recipe for Belles Hot Chicken Spicy Nashville Style Chicken

 

Sunday Dinner – Cambodian Fish Amok Recipe for an Authentic Steamed Fish Curry in the Old Style

For Sunday dinner I’m making this Cambodian fish amok recipe, as it’s been ages since I’ve savoured what is one of my all-time favourite Cambodian dishes, an authentic steamed fish curry made to a classic recipe from an older generation of cooks who believe that if it’s not properly steamed, it’s not amok trei (steamed fish curry).

‘Amok’ means to steam in banana leaves in Khmer and it is thought that this refined dish is a Royal Khmer specialty dating back to the Khmer Empire. Our recipe is based on the recipe of a respected family of elderly cooks whose mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers made the dish during a time when Cambodian women thought nothing of spending a full day preparing a family feast.

Our Cambodian fish amok recipe isn’t a recipe for the watery fish amok style curry or sloppy fish amok you might have eaten in a Siem Reap tourist restaurant, which can be made in minutes in a wok. To make this authentic steamed fish curry from scratch, including pounding your own Khmer yellow kroeung (an aromatic herb and spice paste), you will need to allow at least a couple of hours. But trust me, it’s worth it!

Cambodian Fish Amok Recipe for an Authentic Steamed Fish Curry in the Old Style

Please do let us know if you’ve made any of our What to Cook this Weekend recipes in the comments below as we’d love to get your feedback and hear how our recipes turned out for you.

SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Lara Dunston Patreon

AUTHOR BIO

Photo of author
A travel and food writer who has experienced over 70 countries and written for The Guardian, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Feast, Delicious, National Geographic Traveller, Conde Nast Traveller, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, DestinAsian, TIME, CNN, The Independent, The Telegraph, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, AFAR, Wanderlust, International Traveller, Get Lost, Four Seasons Magazine, Fah Thai, Sawasdee, and more, as well as authored more than 40 guidebooks for Lonely Planet, DK, Footprint, Rough Guides, Fodors, Thomas Cook, and AA Guides.

Leave a comment