Monday, May 26, 2008

Laab Gai (Thai Chicken Salad)

laab gai
Total Time: 25 minutes

Grade: A

Make Again: Yes

Recipe Source: The Best Chicken Recipe
Recipe: America's Test Kitchen TV Show  (Season 10)

I have no intention of buying this latest CI cookbook, because it is full of recipes I own in other books. Also, I am kind of tired of the standard CI cookbook, since I've read so many of them. (I'm sticking with the Best of ATK books, which they will hopefully continue, since they are much more attractive and feature the highlights of all their new books.) But I was happy to see it at the library and will try a few of the new recipes in there.

This was good. My biggest problem with cooking Thai though is the smell of the fish sauce. I hate it! I try to not smell it until the cooking is done. However, this recipe doesn't have a huge number of ingredients in the sauce, so the smell was still strong after combining everything, and that affects how it tastes to me. Once the smell went away, it all tasted good. I mixed the leftovers with some leftover rice which is also good.

The recipe calls for 2 T. of toasted rice which is then ground up. I was lucky enough to find some rice flour in the Thai section of a good internation grocery store close to me, and it was only $1. That saved some time and effort. It kind of made up for the fact that I had to pay $2.50 for a tiny amount of not super fresh basil. I should have waited until my basil was bigger to try this recipe, but I had some ground chicken and went for it now.

I skipped the oil, because the chicken had enough fat in it. I also skipped the step of mashing the chicken before cooking. I had to mash it while cooking. I discovered my potato masher worked really well for this.

I will probably make this again, since it was so easy, but I wouldn't spend a lot of money on the basil to make this.

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