Thai Noodle Salad

A friend brought me some cucumbers and apples picked from her own organic garden. She did warn me that the apples were a little bit tart for eating. Well, that's good news to me. If you grew up in Southeast Asia, it is quite common for people to eat fruit like mango, jicama and watermelon sprinkled with salt or dipped in chili sauce or sauteed shrimp paste (bagoong). The result is a beautiful intermingling of the sweetness and tartness of the fruit and the savoury layers of the sauce or dip. Beautiful! Just beautiful. Some people may cringe, but my mouth is watering just with the thought of semi-ripe mango dipped in bagoong, sort of like Pavlov's dog. I cut up some of the apples and sprinkled them with Himalayan crystal salt. I was one happy camper. I should have really posted a picture of my salted apples in here but I was way too happy munching.

Then came the next day and it was lunch time. I was hungry and I guess when you're hungry you really do become a cook. Not necessarily a good one but at least you know, a cook. I opened the fridge and some of the apples greeted me. I could have just eaten them as they are but I was too hungry. I remembered how crisp they are from my salted apple binge the night before so I thought I'd better do something about them while they're very fresh. A salad would be able to take advantage of the apples' crisp texture and highlight their sweetness and sharp clean tartness. A salad is a texture thing, for me anyway. I had cucumbers too and some left over roasted chicken with pan juices from dinner. After a little scavenger hunt, I discovered that I didn't have lettuce but I had a cabbage in my fridge and a few other things from the pantry. I made a Thai-inspired warm chicken noodle salad. I don't know if this salad actually exists in Thailand, but you know they say imitation is the best form of flattery so if somebody from Thailand stumbles onto this, please forgive my poor attempt but I just adore your food. I did this to the Vietnamese too and their noodle salad. The flavour is quite similar but I made this out of Gordon Ramsay's rice noodle salad with prawns in Thai dressing that I made for myself before. I didn't get a chance to take a photo of it much less write about it because I devoured it right there and then. When you call yourself Chowhound, what more do you expect? Hey it's Gordon Ramsay's food, come on! It's not all my fault.



I've written down my recipe in case it comes handy again one of these days and in case a ravishingly hungry aspiring cook didn't know what to do and need a little bit of inspiration. These days you go to Google to look for answers in just about everything really so my ravishingly hungry aspiring cook might do just that trying to solve a very pressing situation, hunger.



Salad

250g of vermicelli noodles, boiled, rinsed in cold water and drained
2 tart apples like Granny Smith, thinly sliced (julienned)
1 small or 1/2 a large cucumber, thinly sliced (not super thinly sliced, it has to hold itself)
1 small bell pepper (any colour), thinly sliced (about the same size as the apples)
1 medium carrot, shaved
1/8 or 1/4 of a medium sized head of cabbage, very thinly sliced (use lettuce if you have it)
1 chicken breast (leftover roast would be great), shredded
1/4 cup of hot chicken stock
1 tbsp of toasted black sesame seeds
a handful of both Thai basil leaves and green onions for flavour and garnish (if you have cilantro, I'm sure it will be great with this too)
1 Thai chili, seeded and sliced for garnish (leave the seeds if you want it hot)

Dressing

2 tbsp of fish sauce
1 tbsp of light soy sauce
2 tbsp of brown sugar
juice of half a lime (more if you want)
1 tsp of lime zest (from half a lime)
2 small drops of dark sesame oil

First, I mixed the fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, lime juice, lime zest and sesame oil together in a bowl. Everything from here is really just tossing things together. I placed the vermicelli in a large mixing bowl then I tossed in all the veggies, apple slices and the herbs then added the shredded chicken and poured in the dressing. I tossed everything making sure every bit gets coated with the dressing and tasted it to make sure it had enough salt and peppery heat. Then I poured the hot chicken broth to warm it up and gave it one final toss before devouring it like the Tasmanian devil. Oh, no. I actually managed to take some photos this time before devouring it like Taz.