Spicy Thai salad from another chef’s daughter

Hello everyone!  My name is Elissa and I’m also a chef’s daughter.  My mother ran her own Chinese restaurant and catering business for 15 years.  I’m also a chef’s granddaughter. My grandfather was a chef who owned restaurants in Vietnam, Laos, and the US.  It’s kind of a dream of mine to one day open my own food business too.  However, right now I just cook at home and now I’m going to start blogging about it with Ivete!

Like Ivete, I also have a small Manhattan kitchen, but I make do with what I have.   I love to cook, having grown up working in my Mom’s restaurant and also just watching her cook almost every night.  She inspires me to do the same.   I try to cook every night as well.  It’s not only fun for me, but it’s a home-cooked meal nice reward at the end of the day.   I don’t know if I’m going to post that often, but I’ll try.

So, for my first post, this is a somewhat typical meal that I would cook.  I’m Chinese and and as a result, the foods I cook have a lot of Asian influence to them.  However, my favorite things to cook are all based on the season and what’s fresh.  Tonight, I’ve cooked up a Thai-influenced dinner.  I made spicy pork tenderloin, salad (kind of like larb, but not really), and sauteed clams.   This took me about an hour and fifteen minutes to make.

I’m going to get my salad ready first.  The salad is based off of Larb, which is a Thai/Laotian salad that usually has lemongrass, mint, and cilantro in it.  I don’t have all of those ingredients in my apartment, so I’m going to wing it a bit.  To start, I take about a pound of ground chicken and seasoned it with some salt, white pepper, and a dash of fish sauce.  I’m cooking this first so the chicken can cool before it gets tossed with the salad greens.

I don’t have any mint or cilantro, but I do have some delicious Thai basil!   Thai basil has slight spicy kick to it compared to Italian basil.  You can easily tell the difference because Thai basil has red stems.  So, as my chicken browns, I’m cutting up the rest of my ingredients and tossing it in my big Halloween candy bowl that doubles as a salad bowl.

After chopping tossing all of my dry ingredients and adding the chicken, I’ve sliced up some limes and squeezed the juice all over the salad.  Adding a little more fish sauce and olive oil, my salad is done!

This being my first post, I realize I probably shouldn’t post all three courses of the meal here, so I’ll save the spicy pork tenderloin and the clams for another day.

Larb-like Thai salad

• 1 pound of ground chicken (or pork)
• 1 tablespoon of fish sauce
• white pepper and salt
• 2 hearts of Romaine, chopped
• 1 jalapeño, deseeded and chopped
• half an onion, chopped
• a large handful (maybe a cup) of Thai basil leaves, torn
• three scallions, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 2 tablespoons of fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 teaspoon of chili garlic sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon of sugar or a packet of Splenda
• 1 lime

Saute the chicken and mix in with 1 tablespoon of fish sauce and some white pepper and salt.  Drain and set aside to cool after it’s cooked.

Combine the rest of the dry ingredients in a large salad bowl (or Halloween candy bowl, if you’re me).

After the chicken has cooled, add it to the salad bowl.

In a separate bowl, mix the fish sauce, olive oil, chili garlic sauce, sugar, and the juice of one lime.

Toss with the salad.

Tagged as: asian salad, salad