Adventures In Thai Salad
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A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away), I saw a recipe on YouTube and gave it a whirl. As time passed, I adjusted it to my own taste and the result is the Thai Salad that I’m going to share with you today. The big secret to this salad is the dressing…it’s just amazing. Soy sauce, peanut butter, lime, sesame oil, honey, fresh garlic, fresh ginger…whisk it all together and set it aside while you prep your veggies.
I’ll be honest…julienning veggies is a little tedious. So…I cheat. I buy my carrots already nicely chopped up and use my mandolin slicer for everything else. This gives me nice even slices of everything. Now, if you want to be all avante gard or cordon bleu or whatever, you can then create a sort of deconstructed salad where the various elements are left rather long and sort of segregated in the salad bowl. That is a striking presentation. But it’s hard to eat that way. In the interests of making the salad actually easy to eat, I generally choose to chop up the julienned veggies into bite-sized bits.
The recipe says to dump all the veggies into a bowl, pour over the dressing, top with scallions and chopped cashews if desired, and serve. And for serving as a side salad to a group of people, that works great. But, if one wanted to portion out the salads to eat during the week, the veggies can be dropped into a widemouth mason jar, and the dressing stored in a little silicon cup which fits into the mouth of the jar, with a plastic or steel lid to close everything up. You wouldn’t want to pour over the dressing until you’re ready to eat the salad, because over time, the dressing softens the veggies.
For this blog post, I chose to eat some salad for dinner and save the rest for another day. This really is delicious…if serving as a side salad, it makes 2-3 portions. But if one wanted to have it as the main meal, then this recipe is the perfect size for a veggie-tastic dinner. You could even throw in some cooked chicken if you wanted.
Give it a try…you won’t be sorry.
Thai Salad
Click here for printable PDF of recipe
INGREDIENTS
For the dressing:
2 Tbsp smooth peanut butter
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp sesame oil
2 Tbsp fresh squeezed lime juice (about 1 lime)
2 Tsp honey or agave nectar
1 clove of garlic, pressed or grated
1/2 Tsp grated fresh ginger
For the salad:
1 1/2 cups cucumber, seeded, and julienned
1 1/2 cups red bell pepper, julienned
1 1/2 cups carrot, peeled and julienned
1 1/2 cups red cabbage, finely sliced
2 green onion stems, sliced on an angle (optional)
1/4 cups cashews, chopped (optional)
DIRECTIONS
In a small bowl, whisk together the dressing ingredients and set aside.
Do all the necessary vegetable prep, then put all salad ingredients except the green onion and cashews in a sufficiently large bowl. Top with the salad dressing and toss.
Portion out the salad into serving bowls and top each with some of the green onions and cashews.
