Yam khai dao

Eggs deep-fried until the edges are lacy and brittle, then cut up and dressed while warm.

Egg. 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

6 eggs
4 tablespoons lime juice
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon palm sugar
4 shallots, thinly sliced
2 tomatoes, in wedges
100 g Chinese celery, in lengths
6 bird's eye chillies, sliced
oil, for deep frying

Method

DEEP-FRIED, NOT PAN-FRIED, and that is the dish. An egg lowered into 180C oil puffs instantly and sets with a lacy brown frill and a bubbled underside, and those crisp edges are what the dressing clings to. A pan-fried egg has a soft white and the salad is limp within a minute.
Enough oil to float an egg -- at least 3 cm. Shallow oil gives you a flat fried egg with a burnt bottom.
CRACK EACH EGG INTO A SMALL BOWL FIRST and slide it in from just above the surface. Cracked straight into hot oil from height, the yolk breaks and the white scatters into threads.
One at a time. 60 to 90 seconds, spooning hot oil over the top, until the edges are deep brown and rigid and the yolk is still soft.
Drain on a rack, not paper. Paper steams the underside straight back to softness.
Dressing: lime, fish sauce and palm sugar stirred until the sugar dissolves, then the chillies. Taste it alone -- sour and salty, barely sweet.
CUT THE EGGS INTO QUARTERS WITH SCISSORS, roughly, so the yolk stays mostly whole and there are plenty of crisp edges.
Toss the shallots, tomatoes and celery in the dressing first, then fold the eggs through at the very last moment.
Serve immediately. Dressed and left five minutes, the frill goes soft and the point of it is gone.

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