Recipe(tried): Thai Spicy Ground Chicken and Toasted Rice (Larb Gai)

Thai Spicy Ground Chicken and Toasted Rice, "Larb Gai"

This is one of our all-time favorite Thai dishes, and it is a very common dish served throughout Thailand as well as Laos. Lawb is an easy, quick to make "spicy" dish (it can be, and often is fierily hot). It can be found on Thai restaurant menus in America as "chicken salad Thai style", which might be the best description for this dish. It can be made with beef (lawb nuea) or pork (lawb muu) instead of chicken. In Thailand it is almost always a chicken recipe.

2-3 tablespoons lime juice
2-3 tablespoons chicken stock
2-3 tablespoons fish sauce
4-6 teaspoons ground red chilis (not to be substituted with "chilli powder" as sold in western supermarkets!)
1 tablespoon khao koor (ground toasted rice--see below)
3-4 shallots (small purple or red onions) chopped
half a stalk of lemon grass very thinly sliced
3 kaffir lime leaves, shredded
1-2 spring onions (scallions), thinly sliced
1 teaspoon powdered galangal
4 ounces of chicken

Khao Koor: get a medium sized wok fairly hot, and add a couple of tablespoons of uncooked rice. Keep in movement until the rice starts to turn golden brown. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. Grind to a fairly coarse powder in a spice mill, or a mortar & pestle, or a blender or a good clean coffee grinder (all of these work well but keep in mind that a coffee grinder tends to grind too fine--the powder should retain some "texture").

Garnish

lettuce, parlsey, sliced raddish and turnip, coriander leaves.

Method

Line a serving dish with the lettuce leaves. Chop the chicken to make it similar consistency as ground beef (can be done in a food processor or with two cleavers). In a fairly high wok, with a very small amount of oil, stir fry the chicken until it just starts to turn whitish, then add all the remaining ingredients (if using precooked meat, simply add everything to a hot wok together), and stir until heated through and the chicken is cooked.

Serve on the bed of lettuce leaves and garnish to taste. Serve with steamed sticky rice (if you prefer you can use Thai jasmine rice and a dish of mixed [raw] fresh vegetables, and the usual Thai table condiments.

The usual way to eat this is to take a small ball of sticky rice in the fingers and use it to pick up a little lawb, then eat it with the raw veggies. You can also use a fork and spoon as a lot of Thais do.

Galanga (galangal) is an erect annual plant with aromatic, ginger-like rhizomes.