Cambodian chicken & pomelo salad
A stolen recipe? Let’s say “adapted” from a wonderful book you should try and get your hands on, “The Best of Friends Restaurant”. Here is my version of their recipe of Cambodian chicken & pomelo salad. It’s a cracker folks.
Friends is a charity & restaurant in Cambodia taking kids off the streets, housing them and training them in all things to do with food and restaurants from cooking to waiting to cocktail shaking. The kids are then a much more valuable resource to the restaurant and hospitality industry in Cambodia. Hopefully this, in turn, means gainful employment.
This recipe is absolutely gorgeous, sour, sweet, salty, spicy and to be honest bloody simple. Get the freshest ingredients you can for this as this will make a difference. Make the salad on the day, but the dressing the day before if you can.
You’ll need for the salad element;
- 2 pomelos, peeled and broken into small pieces;
- 4 boneless chicken breasts that I simply grilled with a little olive oil, salt & pepper – then thinly slice when cool; and
- A large handful of chopped mint.
Dressing for the salad;
- 4 tablespoons fish sauce;
- 4 tablespoons brown (or white) sugar;
- 2 tablespoons lime juice;
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar (or white wine vinegar);
- 4 garlic cloves finely chopped;
- 2 chili padi finely chopped; and
- 1/3 of a cup of hot water.
Mix all this together until the sugar had dissolved, and then let it cool down in the fridge. When you are ready to eat, mix all the pomelo, chicken and mint in a bowl and then drizzle that special dressing all over. Give a little toss and serve away perhaps with a little garnish of mint and some quartered limes if you want more zing.
