Here's a quick and easy salad using minced chicken or turkey as a cheap alternative to chicken breasts and turkey escalopes. Vietnamese food is full of fragrant herbs to aid digestion and balance out the heat from ginger, chilli and garlic. This is another dish which can be cooked in advance with any leftover ingredients easily used up in other dishes.
You can change this salad to suit your taste or particular diet, so a few crunchy nuts make a great addition or swap the meat for prawns or squid, it doesn't really matter..
First of all make the dressing, make plenty and it will keep in the fridge for up to five days.
Turkey Special
1. Take a bowl and add a good glug (2-3 tbsp) of Thai fish sauce (readily available in supermarkets-tastes better than it smells!), the juice of one lime, a teaspoon of caster sugar, fresh or dried chilli to taste and plenty of chopped fresh coriander and mint. Mix well.
2. In a saucepan dissolve half a chicken or vegetable stock cube into boiling water, whisk well and lower the heat.
3. Take another bowl and build your salad, you can use baby spinach, beansprouts, sliced radish, cucumber, cherry tomatoes etc or for those on a strict diet, baby spinach leaves are fine.
4. Now take as much minced chicken or turkey as per your diet and season with black pepper but NO salt, the fish sauce will be quite salty.Drop into the hot stock and bring to the boil, lower the heat and simmer for four to five minutes or until cooked through. Drain the meat and then add to the salad.
5. Season to taste with the dressing, add more chilli and or herbs as required.The salad should taste hot, fresh and aromatic.
