Another Thai exploration

[chickenfeet]

There's a Thai dish, or rather category of dishes, that's been intriguing me for a while because it sounded fairly weird and I didn't run into it in Thailand. It's crispy fish salad. Tonight I decided to give it a go. Basically one grills a catfish to seriously cooked status (skin blistered etc), strips the flesh from the skin and bones and flakes it to the texture roughly of breadcrumbs. One then deep fries the fish crumbs, mixes them with sliced green mango (I used a Granny Smith because I couldn't get an unripe mango today). It's then mixed with a garlic, chilli, sugar, lime, fish sauce dressing and topped with sliced shallots, fried peanuts, cilantro and mint. It's bloody amazing!

We ate with a stir fry of pork belly, cucumber and egg, a nam prik kapi, raw veggies and lots of rice. Highly recommended!

Comments

[helianthas.livejournal.com]

OK, when I come up there to pick up the black-&-white kitten (whom I've already named Paco), you will have to make me a Thai meal.

Yum!!!!!!!!

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

You'll need to be here by about noon tomorrow to get the kitten

[helianthas.livejournal.com]

awwww....

I'm sure he'll find a great Canadian home. He's such a cutie!

[lemur-catta.livejournal.com]

We'll make a new kitten just for you when you're ready :)

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Maybe we should leave that to cats?

[lemur-catta.livejournal.com]

awww...why should they have all the fun...*purrs and rolls over* ...if I could make kittens instead of an icky human baby, I'd definitely have a litter or two ;)

Come to think of it..when cats do it it doesn't look like much fun :/

[metalana.livejournal.com]

The fish-crumbs, and most of the rest (not the mango slices), sound like the classic Lao dish "laap" (pronounced "larp"). Example with beef instead: http://www.galanga.com/lao/laap.html. I think there is a chicken laap on the menu at Vanipha something, on St Clair W; they are a Lao/Thai restaurant.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was certainly my first thought, too, but it doesn't have the roasted rice powder that larb gai has.

Yum. Larb.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Different texture too since larps tend to be raw or very lightly cooked while this was crispy.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's true. I'm pretty sure I've had a larb gai with grilled meat, but maybe only one; the recipe that I make it from just boils the chicken. Oddly enough, I don't think they'd have much success convincing North Americans to eat raw meat.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Some of the larp recipes I have call for assorted minced boiled pig's offal

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

There's a well known Thai dish that mixes slices of grilled beef with chillis, shallot, basil, mint, garlic and roasted rice powder. It's very good. I quite often make it when we have left over steak around.