Fish sauce smell much?

I attempted my first Thai style salad today with the all important fish sauce. So, I had a bit of this stuff stashed at the back of the cupboard or rather in one of many identical looking cardboard boxes and was inspired by Rick Stein's adventures in the far east: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lyfqf/hd/Rick_Steins_Far_Eastern_Odyssey_Episode_3/. So I decided to grab the bottle and start the making. The result was surprisingly nice to my very asian palate but I don't know how it will be to another so I shall have to try it out tomorrow on some western palates =P

The picture is not very good but this 'dish' is very easy and since I didn't have many ingredients this is a Thai salad a la Rinny hehe!


Salad ingredients: Cucumber finely chopped, carrots grated, chinese leaf, 1 spring onion finely sliced and a large handful of small ready to eat prawns.
Salad dressing: 2 tablespoons fish sauce, 1/2 red chilli chopped finely, 1/2 lemon (or lime) juice squeezed, 1 garlic clove crushed then finely chopped, 2 tablespoons water, 1 tablespoon sugar.

It's amazing how such little ingredients can make such a delicious dish!

You can tweak this ofcourse! Try adding: finely sliced shallots, shredded green mango, basil, kafir lime leaves =]

On a different note, I dissected 6 rats today and my lab partner tried to dissect a rat brain but ended up decapitating the poor rat and accidentally cutting a chunk of brain out! She also dropped rat gut onto her jeans, lovely (!). All in a days work ^_^Y