When I tell people I give recipes each week for Fine Music Event News, I am always asked “when are you doing your salads?”. At home we have salad with some sort of protein very frequently. It might be a crisp salad with a Japanese dressing, crisp skin salmon piece on top and plenty of pickled ginger, or it could be a variation on Greek salad with charred and sliced rare loin of lamb, black olives, and feta. Today’s version with Thai Larb is very tasty!

Thai Larb with Salad (4 people)

Ingredients
500g chicken mince
2 tbs olive oil
1 chopped onion
2 crushed cloves garlic
1/2 tsp crushed chilli
1 tsp grated ginger
Juice & rind of 1 lime
3 tbs fish sauce
3 tbs palm sugar (I now buy this as a liquid from the Asian supermarket)

Method
Heat the olive oil in a frypan and sauté the onion and garlic till very soft
Add the chicken mince and fry till all browned
Add the rest of the ingredients and fry until the consistency is quite dry and crumbly. Check for seasoning.

Salad

You can use anything you want. In summer there’s always mango or perhaps nectarine. Orange perhaps. Any other greens. You can use whatever you have but I use:

Ingredients
Iceberg lettuce
Rocket
Shallots
Parsley & mint
Tomato
Grated carrot
Cucumber
Capsicum
Lots of avocados
And chopped roasted (not salted) cashews or peanuts to garnish.

Salad dressing

Ingredients
1/4 cup honey softened in the microwave
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
Salt & Pepper

Method
Put the ingredients for the dressing into a jar with a tight lid. Shake till well mixed
Chop the salad vegetables and divide into big bowls. Add dressing to each serve
Pile hot larb on top and then chopped cashews

Enjoy!