I love the flavors of Thai, Vietnamese and Laotian food. I also don’t have any of those style of restaurants conveniently nearby. I cobbled this together for quick and easy summer suppers when I had a craving for those flavor palettes – sweet, sour, spicy and salty. Larb is a Thai dish. It’s a flavorful and tart salad, and I love it. But this is not, by any means, the real deal. It’s just loosely based on the authentic dish – which has ingredient variations depending on which region the dish it’s from. But, it’s Tuesday, I am lazy and don’t want to toast and grind my rice to powder. Also, I am out of palm sugar. So, I make this.
“Everything I like to eat is usually in a bowl,” said a friend of mine the other day. I agree! I like to do rice or salad bowls because then everyone can pick what they want to go in to their dish. If you want to skip the extra steps of prepping the ingredients for the salad bowls, you can also just wrap the mince in lettuce leaves with a drizzle of the dressing and munch away happily.
Recipe
Tuesday ‘Almost’ Larb Bowls
Serves 4INGREDIENTS
- 2 tbsp veggie oil
- 5 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 lb ground pork, beef, lamb, chicken or 1½ lb minced shiitake mushrooms
- ½ tsp each, salt and ground pepper
- ⅓ cup red onion or shallot, chopped
- 1-2 red hot chili peppers, finely chopped
- ¼ tsp dried hot red pepper flakes
- 4 tbsp fresh lime juice, divided
- 4 tbsp fish sauce, divided
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- ¼ cup water
- ½ cup each or any: cilantro leaves, mint leaves, basil leaves (to total at least 1½ cups of herb)
BOWL COMPONENTS
- 4 cups steamed rice, white or brown
- 2-3 cups shredded green cabbage (bok choi or Napa)
- 1 heaping cup shredded or matchstick carrots
- ⅓ cup peanuts, or toasted cashews (optional)
- 4 scallions, thinly sliced
- 1 cucumber, thinly sliced
- If you have some around: edamame, bean sprouts, pickled jalapeños OR Whole leaves of red or iceberg lettuce to wrap larb mix and eat!
INSTRUCTIONS
- In a small bowl mix together 2 tablespoons of the lime juice, 2 tablespoons of the fish sauce, red pepper flakes, brown sugar and ¼ cup cold water until the sugar is dissolved. Set aside.
- In a skillet over medium-high heat, bring oil to temperature and sauté garlic 1 minute. Add minced meat and salt and pepper to pan, and mix with garlic to break up and cook until no pink remains. Next, remove from heat and fold red onion or shallot, red chili pepper, remaining lime juice and fish sauce into meat. Let cool a bit then fold in some of the herbs – retaining half for serving.
- Make bowls of your choice of ingredients and dress with spoonfuls of the lime dressing to taste. Alternatively, wrap the larb in lettuce with some nuts and spoon over a bit of the dressing.
Fish Sauce = Flavor Bomb
Fish sauce is a condiment made of salted and fermented little fish that are barrel-aged for a couple of years. The resulting sauce is a salty, deep, stinky and funky umami tsunami. The sauce is a staple in East and Southeastern Asian cuisine. Like Pad Thai? Green Papaya salad? That yummy imperial roll dipping sauce? It is in all of those dishes and more. Look for it in the Asian section of your supermarket (if you don’t have a fun Asian market near you.) You can also use fish sauce to all kinds of things – sauces, gravy, pasta, salad dressings or greens. Use it anytime you need a little depth of flavor and salt.