TOM KHA GAI SALAD

Tom Kha Gai is a common soup found throughout Thailand and it’s neighbouring countries. Most commonly it features chicken, however it can also use prawns. At Dragonfly we took the flavours of the traditional soup and reinvented them into a salad.

Prep:
20 minutes
Cook:
15 minutes
Serves:
4-6

Ingredients

200g chicken tenderloin or sliced chicken breast

150ml water

25ml fish sauce

25ml dark soy sauce

25g white sugar

Salad

200g straw mushrooms

50ml canola oil

100g fresh coconut flesh

100g spring onions

80g mixed colour cherry tomatoes

20g mint

20g Thai basil

20g Vietnamese mint

Presentation

240g fresh mung beans

50ml light coconut milk

50ml Nahm Jim(recipe below)

Method

Remove tendons from the tenderloin and place chicken in a heatproof bowl with water, fish sauce, soy and sugar. Cover and leave to marinate in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours or overnight if you have time

Once marinated, fill a steamer with water and bring to the boil. Place the bowl of chicken in the steamer and cook for 15-18 minutes. Once cooked thoroughly, remove the bowl from heat and allow to cool. Discard the liquid and gently tear chicken into thread-like pieces, place on a lined baking tray

Preheat oven to 90ºC and oven dry the chicken pieces for 15 minutes. Tease the threads with your fingers and continue drying until the texture resembles leather. Remove from oven and allow the chicken to cool. Once cooled, tease the threads again until the chicken becomes fluffy

Store in the refrigerator until needed

Finely slice the mushrooms and gently fry with canola oil until they become tender. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Halve the tomatoes, slice the spring onion and coconut flesh and pick the leaves off the mint and basil, discarding the stalks

Set aside

Place the mung beans, tomato, spring onion, cooked mushrooms and herbs into a large bowl. Add the light coconut milk and Nahm Jim into the bowl and toss evenly. Distribute even amounts of salad in a bowl and spoon over any leftover dressing and additional herbs. Sprinkle the top of salad with the dried chicken and serve immediately

To make Nahm Jim:Place 290ml fish sauce and 270g finely chopped palm sugar into a medium pot and heat over a low heat until the palm sugar has dissolved, but do not let it boil

Once the sugar is dissolved remove from the heat. Finely slice 50g coriander roots and add it to the Nahm Jim with the 5 finely chopped birds eye chillis and a clove of crushed garlic

Add 75ml each of lemon and lime juice and stir to combine. This is a fantastic dipping sauce to have on hand or in this case a delicious salad dressing