RCP for Karen: Thai Pork, Glass Noodle and Herb salad

[Jenise]

This is the Milk Street recipe I made a few days ago.

4 ounces glass noodles
1-2 teaspoons red pepper flakes or bird chiles to your tolerance
3 Tblsp Fish Sauce
3 Tblsp lime juice (I added even more, but I like SOUR)
2 tsp white sugar
1 large shallot, halved and thinly sliced
1 tsp neutral oil
8 ounces ground pork
S&P to taste (I added soy sauce instead of salt)
1 c lightly packed fresh mint
1 cup lightly packed fresh cilantro
2 scallions, thinly sliced

Place noodles in medium bowl and cover with boiling water. Let stand until noodles are tender, about 15 minutes. Drain, then snip noodles in several places for shorter, more fork-friendly lengths.

While the noodles soak, in a small skillet lightly toast the red pepper flakes then transfer to a mixing bowl large enough for the rest of the ingredients to begin the dressing. Add fish sauce, lime juice, sugar and shallot. Combine. Using the same skillet, heat the oil until shimmering and add the pork, breaking up the meat into fine bits. (If your pork is coarse ground vs. fine, consider chopping with a knife or giving it a brief whiz in your food processor--I did.) Add the noodles, pork and juices to the dressing.

Let the mixture stand for about 10 minutes then add the greens. Taste and season.


I am btw amused by another item on the same page about how to get more juice from your limes. It's a contest between rolling on the counter and heating in the MW or warm water. Rolling on the counter won. But do they recommend that you use a reamer instead of just bare-hand squeezing? Best trick of all, but no they don't.

Thank you, Jenise

The Thai name for this dish is Larb Woonsen Moo Sap (Larb = spicy meat salad; woonsen = bean thread noodles; moo = pork; sap = spicy hot). Interesting that you should post this now--I was planning to make this as soon as my current crop of leftovers is gone.

Larb is perfect for hot summer weather because the only cooking involved is for the meat and the dish is meant to be served at room temperature. The common ingredients for larb are minced meat (pork, chicken, or beef--I have a beef larb recipe that uses grilled and diced flank steak), shallots, scallions, cilantro, mint, ground or fresh hot chiles, fish sauce, and lime juice, and roasted rice (khao koor). The Milk Street recipe you posted doesn't have the khao koor.

Larb is supposed to be blazingly hot but of course you can tone that down.

My larb recipes come from the (late, lamented) Importfood.com and from Muoi Khuntilanont, whose husband Colonel Ian Philpott published many of her recipes on rec.food.recipes. They were collected at a website that is no longer, but fortunately I copied the whole set of web pages to my home computer before it disappeared. Muoi was the chef at the excellent restaurant in Nashua NH called Bangkok Oriental Cuisine. I ordered larb nur (beef larb) there once and asked it to be made as hot as it would be in Thailand. Muoi obliged. You can read the full story here.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

The Thai name for this dish is Larb Woonsen Moo Sap (Larb = spicy meat salad; woonsen = bean thread noodles; moo = pork; sap = spicy hot). Interesting that you should post this now--I was planning to make this as soon as my current crop of leftovers is gone.
-Paul W.

Thanks for the actual name. The Milk Street recipe included that and I meant to add it as well, but forgot. Ooops!

Also, for the record, their recipe did include the toasted rice. But if you don't have a spice grinder, it won't work out well. I tried to hand-grind it in a mortar and pestle as suggested in the recipe but no way could get it to the fine powder it should be, and I wasn't about to go out and buy some commercially made though I know it exists. The sandy coarse grain of what I could achieve was unpleasant and I knew Karen would object to it as well, so I left it out of my instructions.

That sounds absolutely delicious, Jenise. Thanks for posting it.

Jenise, the toasted rice (khao koor) is supposed to have a bit of texture to it. My recipe for it specifically warns that you have to be careful if using a spice or coffee grinder because they tend to do grind the rice too finely.

I'll be making this dish sometime this weekend, probably on Sunday. I just finished shopping for all of the ingredients.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Jenise, the toasted rice (khao koor) is supposed to have a bit of texture to it. My recipe for it specifically warns that you have to be careful if using a spice or coffee grinder because they tend to do grind the rice too finely.

I'll be making this dish sometime this weekend, probably on Sunday. I just finished shopping for all of the ingredients.

-Paul W.

I bought a commercial packet of toasted rice once long ago after returning from Beijing where we'd had a dish topped with toasted rice powder. What I bought was similar. What I made, or tried to, a few days ago--not even close!

I wonder if there's a stylistic difference between Thai and Chinese powdered toasted rice? I've never had the Chinese version. I'll be on the lookout for commercial versions when shopping at Asian groceries.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

There well could be, Paul. FWIW, in all the years since I've never seen the toasted rice powder again--not that I've been looking for it, but one probably wouldn't find it in anything but a very large and well-stocked Asian market, like the ones in Canada. I'll have to sniff around the next time at a T&T.

I've been doing some web searching regarding khao khua (that appears to be the most common Latin spelling; there are no official rules for Latinization). It's not a common Chinese ingredient but used a lot in southeast Asian cooking such as Thai, Lao, and Vietnamese.

Apparently there's no fixed rule for the fineness of the grind. This Wikipedia article on khao khua shows the rather coarse grind my recipes recommend. But this article at Serious Eats shows the finer sort of grind you were shooting for.

What sort of rice were you using? Khao khua should be made with raw glutinous rice (aka sticky rice).

-Paul W.

Thanks Jenise and Paul, I printed and Betsy made last night to take to a concert picnic,
Delicious.
We actually had a bag of toasted rice powder (Khun Shine brand, made in Thailand) in pantry. Unopened, we must have bought for a dish we never made. A great addition. Fine but not truly "powdery". texture looks like Paul's second link (Serious Eats)