Ga-na Chai (Pickled vegetable with Chinese Olive fruit)

Posted by: piyananv on: March 26, 2009

• In: Cooking
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A few weekends ago, my grandma asked me to help her in making Ga-na-chai (กาน่าฉ่าย). For those who don’t familiar with Chinese food, “Ga-na” is a Chinese word for an Olive-like fruit (but not the same as Olive in western dishes) and “Chai” means vegetable. And owing to Ga-na fruit’s unique flavor and aroma, Chinese people add it to sour-pickled vegetable to spice up the pickle. So, “Ga-na-chai” is a traditional pickled vegetable dish with a tasty flavor of Ga-na fruit. It has usually been served with rice congee, as a fast-and-easy breakfast. But personally, I love having it with steamed rice (ข้าวสวย). This dish is made of 3 major ingredients; sour-pickled vegetable (ผักกาดดอง), Ga-na fruit, and dried Shitake mushroom (เห็ดหอมแห้ง). I’ve tried looking up in dictionary to find out what this Ga-na fruit called in English. It is a small green oval-shape fruit of approx 1” long and very similar to Olive fruit. With big help from Ae, the best we can find from internet is “Chinese Olive”. Well, Chinese Olive, that’s it!

Ga-na fruit

 

Below are ingredients that my grandma prepared 1 day beforehand. She planned to make a very large batch in order to give to all of her sons, daughter and grandchildren. If anybody wants to re-create this dish for just one family, I suggest that you should reduce the following ingredients size by 80% (just 1/5 of below ingredients). 

 

Ingredients:

·      1kg Chinese Olives

·      2kg Dried Shitake mushroom, soaked in 4-cup water

·      5kg Sour-pickled vegetable (ผักดองเปรี้ยว), thinly sliced

·      2-3cups Vegetable oil

·      Salt

·      Soy sauce

How to:

1.  Soak dried mushroom in warm water for 30 minutes. Squeeze out water from the softened mushroom with your hand. (Keep the water, don’t pour away). Mince mushroom into small dices.

 

How to dice mushroom.

 

2.  Smash/crush Chinese olives with grinder (ครก). Based on Grandma’s suggestion, one should leave seeds with its flesh. Olive seeds will add more flavor to this dish.

3.  In big pan, add 1 cup oil, wait a few minutes until oil is hot. Add minced mushroom, stir fry mushroom for 5-10 minutes. Use your frying pan spade shovel up mushroom and leave it in a clean bowl.

4.  In the same pan (add ¼ cup oil), add sour-pickled vegetable and stir fry for 5-10 minutes. Add the left ½ cup of left-over water from soaking the mushroom. Add 80g. of salt. Keep stirring for another 5 minutes then shovel up sour-pickled vegetable and leave it in the same bowl where you had put mushroom.

5.  In the pan (add ¼ cup oil), add crushed Chinese Olives and 40g salt. Stir fry for 5-10 minutes then put all ingredients together into one very large deep pan (or large pot).

6.  Use low heat. Leave it to simmer on the oven top for 8 hours. Season with soy sauce. Keep coming back to check and stir ingredients every half an hour (or all will become dry and stick to the pot). Add the rest of water and oil (2-3 tablespoons) every half an hour that you come to check and stir ingredients.

Leave it to cool down. Keep it in dry clean containers. Can be kept up to 1 year.

Sour pickled vegetable, sliced into small pieces

 

Diced dried Shitake mushroom

Crushed Ga-na fruit

Stir frying pickled vegetable

...then, stir frying crushed Ga-na fruit

Simmer at low heat but keep coming back to check every 1/2 hour

Can be kept in clean and tight container for a year!