Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Vietnamese Salad

Cabbage is cheap, long-lasting, full of good vitamins and fiber, and can be delicious, but it suffers from an image problem. It never looks very available in the market-- it's so pale and hard and undelicious looking and once you've smelled overcooked cabbage, it's hard to forget it. Luckily, it's pretty easy to overcome. Here's last night's dinner.

Vietnamese Salad

1/3 cup fish sauce
1/4 cup sugar (white or brown)
2 teaspoons roughly chopped ginger
1 garlic clove, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon chili-garlic paste (or some fresh chilies)
juice of one lime

one small cabbage, thinly sliced
one red pepper, thinly sliced
two carrots, julienned
three scallions, sliced
one handful basil, chopped
one handful mint, chopped
3/4 cup roasted peanuts, chopped

Heat fish sauce and sugar together and stir until sugar dissolves. Add ginger, garlic, chili paste, and lime juice. It will smell awful, but persevere. Blend until garlic and ginger are pretty well pulverized. Mix cabbage, peppers, basil, mint and dressing together. Scatter roasted peanuts over each serving.

We had this with rice noodles and roasted salmon. Delicious and quick.