For our salad schedule, one of us makes salad for Monday & Tuesday. Sometimes it’s good to have a second day of the same salad so that you can fix things that weren’t quite right the first time. The first day of this salad had some dressing issues. According to the recipe is says you can use soy sauce or fish sauce. We chose soy sauce, and used the low sodium version. As a result, the dressing tasted watered down. Adding additional salt to the salad after serving helped though. The second day we used fish sauce and it had a much better overall flavor. I suspect using full sodium soy sauce would have accomplished the same result. For those grossed out by fish sauce, don’t be, it’s really just a vehicle for salt. The thai kind is called Squid Brand, and it’s what we also us in thai cooking.
Be sure and cut up the cilantro pretty fine or else it can be over powering in some bites. We opted to not include the basil, but I can see how this could be good. A good brand of coconut milk is Chaokoh. Both the coconut milk and fish sauce can be found at an asian market.
Based on the recipe found at About Thai Food.
Ingredients
makes 4 servings
- 1 small head romaine or leaf lettuce, or 1 bag of mixed greens (we chose one with carrots)
- 2 green onions, sliced
- 1 cucumbers, chopped into medium pieces or thin slices
- 1 red pepper, chopped
- 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, finely chopped
- 1/2 cup fresh basil, roughly chopped (optional)
Dressing:
- 1/2 cup good-quality coconut milk
- 1 Tbsp. lime juice
- 2 Tbsp. fish sauce or 1 Tbsp. soy sauce plus a pinch of salt
- 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tsp. brown sugar
- 1/4 tsp. dried crushed chili
Whisk together dressing ingredients. Adjust with fish or soy sauce to desired saltiness. Toss salad ingredients together with dressing and serve.
