Hello everybody!

I am introducing Asian dishes into our mostly Mediterranean diet. I
purchased a nice book called "The Practical Encyclopedia of Asian
Cooking" by Sallie Morries and Deh-Ta Hsiung which I find very helpful
and easy to follow. There's one thing, however, that I'm not quite
sure what to do about.

The curried dishes I've been making call for Kaffir lime leaves. It
took a while for me to find them and when I finally did, they were
frozen (a couple of dozen or so pairs of leaves in a plastic tray,
wrapped in plastic).

I bought the leaves and they were half defrosted when I got home. Not
sure what to do, I put them in the freezer right away hoping they'd be
fine.

Well, later that week, I used 4 leaves to make a Thai red chicken
curry with bamboo shoots (recipe from the book). One leave went into
the curry and the other three were added, together with the bamboo
shoots, a few minutes before removing the dish from the heat.

Everything was going fine up until I added the torn Kaffir lime leaves
and the bamboo shoots to the pan. Suddenly my wonderful curry dish
starting smelling like soap. I thought it was just me, but my husband
noticed it too.

This was the first time I used bamboo shoots and Kaffir leaves. The
leaves looked fine though I didn't think of checking their smell
before I put them in the pan.

So, please help me understand this. I hear wonderful things about the
taste and smell of Kaffir lime leaves so what went wrong?

What are they supposed to smell like? And why do these ones I bought
smell like soap?

Thanks.

Iris