Bamboo shoot salad

Boiled bamboo shoots dressed warm, with the shoots boiled twice in changed water first.

Not vegetarian — contains fish sauce. Everything else in it is vegetarian, so it becomes a vegetarian dish if you use vegetarian fish sauce — which is sold, including by Thai brands.

Ingredients

600 g fresh bamboo shoots, in fine shreds
3 tablespoons toasted rice powder
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
3 tablespoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons lime juice
2 teaspoons toasted chilli flakes
4 shallots, thinly sliced
4 spring onions, sliced
1 bunch pak chee lao
1 teaspoon palm sugar

Method

BOIL THEM TWICE IN CHANGED WATER. Fresh bamboo shoots are bitter and carry compounds that need driving off: 10 minutes, drain and throw the water away, then 10 minutes in fresh water. Neither water is kept, and one boil is not enough.
SHRED ALONG THE GRAIN, not across. Across, the fibres separate into threads that catch between the teeth.
Taste a shred after the second boil. If it is still sharply bitter, give it a third.
Drain and squeeze them dry. Water left in them dilutes the dressing to nothing.
DRESS THEM WARM. Bamboo takes up a dressing while it still has some heat in it and refuses once cold, which is the difference between a salad with flavour and a salad with dressing sitting in the bottom.
Toast the rice powder yourself -- raw glutinous rice in a dry pan until deep brown, then pounded coarse. It thickens the dressing and is most of the body here.
Mix the fish sauce, lime, palm sugar and chilli flakes, then fold the warm shoots through.
Rice powder and sesame in, folded until everything is coated and the dressing has stopped running.
Shallots, spring onions and pak chee lao last, off the heat. Serve warm or at room temperature, with sticky rice.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Thailand · All recipes