Thai Cuisine Recipe

The word larb is not the name of a dish, as most people would have you believe. Larb is a cooking term. If you had any kind of meat and say that you will larb it, this means that you will grind up the meat. Cook it in a pot with very little water and season it with the herbs and spices and to really make it a real larb you mix in the ground toasted rice kernels. This dish is from the North East of Thailand where food is scarce in the olden days. People in Isan take any kind of meat that they can find in the fields, such as frogs or even lizards and larb them. They make the lard very spice and very strong flavors so that a little goes a long way and eat it with steamed sticky rice and fresh vegetables.

Lard Ok Ped (Warm duck breast salad Isan style)
Ingredients:
Ground duck breast meat, with some duck skin 300 grams.
Water       ½ cup
Coarsely ground, toasted rice kernels     2 TBSP
Ground dry chili peppers     2 TBSP
Fish sauce     2 TBSP
Lime Juice     1 TBSP
Peeled and thinly sliced shallots     ¼ cup
Green onion thinly sliced       ¼ cup
Saw tooth coriander, sliced       as needed
Chopped coriander       as needed
Fried dry chili peppers as needed
Mint leaves, picked         ¼ cup

1. In a saucepan, add water and bring it to boil on a stove.

2. Add the ground duck meat and stir to cook until just done. Do not over cook or duck meat will dry up and lose its flavor.

3. Once cooked take it off the stove and season the duck meat with ground dry chili peppers, fish sauce and lime juice. Taste it. It should be sour, spicy hot and salty.

4. Add the rest of the vegetables except mint leaves and mix well. To finish add the ground toasted rice kernels and some mint leaves. Spoon the salad from the sauce pan onto a plate and serve with lot of accompanying vegetable such as cabbage, leafy lettuce and long beans or cucumber.

a. Larb can be made with all kinds of meat such as pork or chicken. You can even try to make Larb with raw salmon, just omit the cooking process and just dress you raw salmon with the ingredients indicated. This is like a Thai Isan steak tartar.

b. In the recipe it calls for vegetables “ as needed”. This really depends on you is you like your Larb to be quite fragrant with all the herbs or just the true taste of the duck meat!