Palm sugar-griddled chicken with radishes, cucumber and vermicelli rice noodles
Oh, I love this dish. The cold noodles, the crisp vegetables, the sweet chicken, the heat of the dressing. Try to find watermelon radish, an Asian radish with a stunning pink interior and a great texture. You can use multicoloured radishes (if you can get hold of them) instead, or just regular radishes are fine.
Ingredients
FOR THE SALAD
- 1 lemon grass stalk
- 150 ml 5fl oz soy sauce
- 50 ml 2fl oz rice wine
- 40 g 1½oz root ginger, peeled and grated
- 6 garlic cloves grated or crushed
- 4½ tbsp palm sugar or soft light brown sugar
- 1 bunch of coriander
- juice of 2 limes
- 8 skinless boneless chicken thighs
- 150 g 5½oz rice vermicelli
- 175 g 6oz watermelon radish, or regular radishes
- 150 g 5½oz ridge cucumber, or regular cucumber
- 2 tbsp groundnut oil
- leaves from a small bunch of mint torn
FOR THE DRESSING
- about 2 tbsp raw rice
- 1 red chilli halved, deseeded and chopped
- 2 tbsp palm sugar or soft light brown sugar
- 2 garlic cloves chopped
- 2 tsp grated root ginger
- 50 ml 2fl oz fish sauce
- juice of 1 lime
Instructions
- Remove the coarse outer layers from the lemon grass and trim the top and base.
- Chop the rest – the softer bit of the lemon grass – as finely as you can.
- Mix together the soy sauce, rice wine, ginger, garlic, palm sugar, finely chopped coriander stalks, half the lime juice and the lemon grass.
- Put the chicken in a dish and pour over the marinade, turning to coat.
- Cover with cling film and put in the fridge for about four hours.
- Bring it to room temperature before cooking.
- To make the dressing, put the rice into a hot frying pan and cook for two or three minutes, shaking regularly, until pale golden brown.
- Transfer to a large mortar or spice grinder and set aside to cool.
- Once cool, pulverize.
- Put the chilli, palm sugar and garlic into a mortar and crush until you almost have a paste.
- Pound in the root ginger, then gradually add the fish sauce and lime juice and stir in 1 tbsp of the toasted rice.
- Put the rice vermicelli into just-boiled water and leave it for four minutes, then drain really well, run cold water through them and leave to drain and cool.
- If you have found watermelon radish, peel off the skin then, using a small sharp knife, shave off strips of it in furls.
- You should end up with something that looks like pink pencil shavings.
- Or just finely slice regular radishes and the cucumber.
- Toss the cold noodles with the cucumber, radish, the rest of the lime juice, the oil and most of the mint.
- Heat a griddle pan.
- Shaking the excess marinade off the chicken, cook each piece on the hot griddle on both sides, starting on a medium-high heat to get a good colour, then reducing the heat to cook the chicken through.
- Divide the salad between four shallow bowls or one large one.
- Put the chicken on top and scatter with the rest of the mint.
- Spoon on a little dressing and offer the rest in a bowl.