Thai Salad

Working in a Thai restaurant gives you many advantages (even if you are only a kitchenhand/waiter!). I've had many opportunities to talk to the chefs and learn a few traditional Thai meals from them. Here's a great recipe for a Thai noodle salad. Actually the 'salad dressing' (for want of a better expression) is a basic sauce that can be used in making any Thai salad.

Thai Noodle Salad

Ingredients:

• 200g chicken breast, sliced


• Glass noodles (Tang Hoon)


• Celery slices


• Spring onion, sliced


• 1 red onion, sliced


• Coriander


• Red chilli, sliced

Dressing:

• Lime juice


• Chilli sauce (sweet thai chilli or normal)


• 2-3 tbsp of fish sauce

Method:

1. The meat in Thai salads are fried, then boiled. In a pan, heat some oil and toss the sliced chicken breast in. Lightly fry for about 1-2 minutes, then add water until it covers about 2/3 of the meat. Let the meat boil, stirring if necessary and remove once done.


2. In a bowl, combine the dressing ingredients together. Mix in the vegetables and the chicken meat. Serve garnished with sliced spring onions, coriander and celery leaves.

*Note: This recipe is rather brief with the measurements of the ingredients. Just mix up whatever feels right (but you might want to go easy on the onions if you do not like the taste - or have a meeting after!) and taste the dressing before mixing the vegetables in. It's probably best to put less rather than more in at the start as you can't remove ingredients once you start. The salad should be sour-ish and hot!

Mom's Chocolate Coconut Slice

What better way to start a blog then with a good desert recipe. This is one that my mom gave to me (although I don't think she came up with it herself) and one that I've used many times with great success. It's really easy and you should have no trouble making it *cough Mel*. Just bear in mind that it is made of condensed milk so you will probably want to store it in the fridge. Have fun!

Mom's Chocolate Coconut Slice

Ingredients

• 1 packet of malt biscuits


• 1 tin sweetened condensed milk


• 150g butter


• 2 cups of shredded coconut

Icing

• 1 tbsp butter


• 3 tbsp of cocoa powder


• 5 tbsp of hot water


• Icing sugar

1. Crush the malt biscuits as fine as possible. (This can be quite time consuming!). What mom told me was to use a potato masher and to do it in a medium sized pot. That kinda helps but I still prefer to do it with my fingers.


2. Melt the butter and mix it in with the crushed biscuits.


3. In another pot, warm the sweetened condensed milk on low heat. You want to get it so it becomes runny but not to burn it. When it's runny mix the shredded coconut in.


4. Using a greased baking tin, press the crushed biscuit mix firmly (but not too compact) to form a base. Spread the condensed milk and coconut mixture over it.


5. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees (C) for about 20 minutes. The condensed milk mixture should be browned when you remove from the oven.


6. Mix the icing ingredients together, using enough icing sugar to make a thick paste.Ice the slice when it's cool then refrigerate before eating.

Soon

Something might be posted here. Soon maybe. Or maybe this will be deleted. Don't bother checking, I'll get back to you on that.