The Cooking Ninja

My search for this recipe started about 5 years ago when I had a similar dish at my friend's place. I meant to ask her for the recipe but forgot about it by the end of the evening. Then one day I stumbled upon this recipe by accident : I do not know if it is exactly the same as my friend's but when I did it, it had a similar taste and fragrance. I hadn't made this for 3 years but after my green Thai curry, I had a sudden craving for Thai food and since Pierre didn't recall ever having it, I decided to have another go at it

Glass Noodles Salad

Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 5 minutes
Makes: 4

Ingredients

• 80 g glass noodles (soaked in water to soften)
• 60 g chicken (finely minced)
• 20 g black fungus/wood ear (cut into fine strips)
• ½ medium onion (sliced)
• 1 tbsp Chinese celery (chopped)
• 1 tsp Chinese parsley/coriander (chopped)
• 12 fresh prawns (shelled and devined)
• 1 tsp chili oil

Sauce

• 3 red and green Bird's eye chili (seeded and chopped)
• 1 clove garlic (finely chopped)
• 4 tbsp fish sauce
• 4 tbsp fresh lime juice
• 1½ tbsp sugar

Directions

1. Boil the glass noodles in a pot of boiling water for about 1 minute.
2. Add in black fungus, minced chicken and prawns and boil it for another minute, stirring it often. Then drain well.
3. Pour the sauce and chili oil over glass noodle salad together with the sliced onions and toss it well.
4. Serve it with some chopped celery and parsley.

The verdict

This salad is very refreshing and aromatic. I love the aroma of freshly squeezed lime juice mixed with fish sauce with a tint of spicy sourness. The coriander and the onions enhance the taste of this salad further. Pierre likes it almost cold, so I ran it through cold tap water after step 2, before adding the sauce to cool it down.

For the vegetarians, I think this dish would be wonderful also with tofu, enoki (Japanese mushrooms) and bean sprouts - that's all I can think of at the moment.

Note

Bird's eye chili are very hot, hotter than fresh cayenne pepper. So if you are not used to that amount of spiciness, substitute it with cayenne chili or some other chili that is milder. Also dried chillies are hotter than fresh ones.