Vietnamese Chicken Salad

Chef: Alison Taafe

Food Teacher - SouthBank Tafe

Degree of difficulty: Medium

Main Ingredients

• 300gms Chinese Cabbage
• 20 mls lime juice (approx I medium lime)
• 50gms Bean sprouts (topped and tailed)
• 2 Medium red chillies
• 200gms poached or steamed chicken breast (no skin or fat)
• ? Bunch chopped coriander leaves (not roots)
• 1 tablespoon of finely shredded Vietnamese mint
• 50 gms roasted chopped peanuts
• 40-60mls dressing (recipe also provided)

The Dressing

• 2 cloves of garlic (crushed finely)
• 30gms red chilli (chopped finely, no seeds if preferred or less chilli)
• 40mls fish sauce
• 10mls rice wine vinegar
• 40mls water
• 2 tablespoons sugar

This dressing is simply made by combining all ingredients together until sugar is dissolved. If you use warm water, the sugar will dissolve more quickly.

METHOD

1. Steam or poach chicken breast lightly. If poaching, use a good quality chicken stock and cover the chicken breast and poach until just cooked. A good tip is to leave the chicken in the stock whilst it is cooling down; this helps to keep the chicken extremely juicy.

2. Cut the Chinese cabbage leaves only (remove white stalk) and shred finely as for lettuce.

3. Finely shred red chillies, removing the seeds and centre stalk if you prefer it not to be so hot. Wear plastic gloves if you don?t want your hand to burn with the chilli oil as this sometimes happens. Top and tail beansprouts. Finely chop Vietnamese mint and coriander (remember to wash the coriander thoroughly)

4. Combine all ingredients together and moisten with the dressing. You may add some thinly shredded chicken breast to this now or you can reserve it and place it on the top of the salad if you prefer to present it this way.

5. Pile the salad up onto a nice square white platter or large plate and garnish with the thin strips of chicken, sprinkle with roasted roughly chopped peanuts and a bunch of coriander or Vietnamese mint. This is a lovely light, fresh and fragrant salad and should not be made up in advance. Only dress and serve the salad at the very last minute if possible as it needs to be crunchy and very fresh as this is the essence of Vietnamese foods.

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Vietnamese Mint Chicken

• Garlic oil or flavored to -taste
• Vietnamese Fish Sauce
• 2 Tsp Sugar
• 1 cn Of Bamboo shoots
• 2 large-sized stalk of Green onion, diced
• 1/2 c of Chicken or Shrimp (cut into marblesized pieces)
• Fresh mint, about 6 leaves
• Crushed red chile peppers (optional)

Directions

1. Pre-cook rice to serve it with.
2. Heat oil and saute onions over med flame until soft.
3. Add a dash of fish sauce. Keep the ingredients moving -Stir Fry!:) so the onions don't burn.
4. Mix in the sugar.
5. Turn up the heat and add chicken or shrimp and cook until almost done, stir frying all the time.
6. Toss in the bamboos shoots ans some chili, if you dare.
7. Finally add the mint leaves so that they don't cook longer than 30 seconds.

Serve over rice.