avocado toast is not overrated. it is perfectly rated

Luang Prabang salad is an easy, simple dish with a slightly unusual dressing that’s a classic in Laos. This Laos salad is a perfect light lunch or side dish both to Asian food and many more.

I mentioned a while ago when I shared larp (or larb, Laos chicken salad) that Laos was one of the places we visited on our honeymoon many years ago now. While there are still many places on my list to visit that I haven’t been to, Laos is definitely one I want to go back to. I don’t know for how much longer, but it didn’t feel ruined by tourism and the culture is truly something special. We were in the Luang Prabang area which is filled with the gentle bells and glistening decorations of Buddhist temples. Apart from when they are setting off fireworks for festivals, that is.

While I was there I took a Laos cooking lesson. We made a number of dishes in the short time, including a few I had tried before then in restaurants already. We also made this common Laos salad often known as Luang Prabang salad which was a lovely accompaniment to the other dishes.

What distinguishes Laos food?

Laos is geographically between Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and the food is very much a reflection of that. Think lime, lemongrass, cilantro and chili flavors and sticky rice accompanying most meals. A lot of Laos dishes are similar to Northern Thai food, and in fact they were the same country in the past so it’s not surprising there is a lot of crossover (like green papaya salad). The other big influence in Laos is that it used to be a French colony and you see that in the food particularly bread. Baguette-style bread is the base for many sandwiches which are sold on every other street corner, alongside crepes and grilled foods.

How it’s made

This Laos salad has maybe a little French influence in it but with a regional twist too. The dressing is almost like a mayonaise, but uses a clever trick of cooked eggyolk to keep it more stable, and with added lime to make it more distinctly Laos. The rest of the salad can vary but usually has a mix of greens, including watercress as the base, some tomato, cucumber and hard boiled egg. You might get some crispy pork on top or some peanuts (which I had but completely forgot to put on top before I ate it).

This salad is fresh, light and just that little bit different from your basic green salad. It makes a great side to many a meal, both Asian and others, or enjoy it as a light lunch as you might in the Laos heat. However you choose, give it a try.

Luang Prabang salad (Laos salad)

An easy, simple salad with a slightly unusual dressing that’s a classic in Laos.

3 eggs (hard boiled)

2 cups lettuce (70g)

1 cup watercress (20g)

1/2 cup mixed leaves (optional, eg arugula, radicchio)

1 tomato (large )

1/3 cucumber (approx 3in/7.5cm piece)

1 tbsp unsalted roasted peanuts (optional, approx, to top)

1/2 tbsp cilantro/coriander (approx, to top)

Dressing

2 yolks from the hard boiled eggs (, above)

2 tbsp vegetable or avocado oil

1 tbsp lime juice

1 tbsp rice wine vinegar

1/2 tbsp sugar

salt and pepper

Start by hard boiling the eggs. You can use your preferred method, but probably the easiest is to put the eggs in a pan, cover with cold water at least 1in/2.5cm over the eggs and bring to the boil. Once the water boils, turn off and leave the eggs in the water for 10-12min then drain and run under cold water to stop them cooking. When cool, carefully peel the eggs.

As the eggs are cooking, roughly chop the lettuce (and other greens, if using) and divide between 2-3 plates, along with the watercress. 

Slice the tomato and cucumber and lay on top of the greens.

Scatter over the peanuts, if using, and cilantro.

For the dressing

Cut two of the eggs in half and remove the yolk. Mash or break up these two yolks in a small blender. Add the remaining dressing ingredients (oil, lime juice, vinegar, sugar and a little salt and pepper) and blend until smooth. Note make sure the yolk is broken up and smooth before you add the other ingredients or it won’t work after.

Cut the remaining egg into quarters or slices and put on the salads. Cut up the leftover whites and add to the salads too, if you like. Drizzle over the dressing and serve.

Try these other summery salads:

#gallery-0-5 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-5 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

grilled nectarine salad

Mexican street corn salad

fruit, herb and feta Israeli couscous salad

Remember to pin for later!

Luang Prabang salad (Laos salad) Luang Prabang salad is an easy, simple dish with a slightly unusual dressing that's a classic in Laos.

Ale02/Shutterstock We’re all tired of cooking. Just cut up some fruit and call it a day. It feels like the 4,000th day of March, and it’s 95 degrees out. I’m standing in line at my local grocery store, six feet away from the next person, slowly melting. Why even bother with my carefully plotted list? I’m done with sourdough starter, done with experimenting with bagels and baked goods, done with meals that take hours “because now I finally have time!” Instead, I lug home a gigantic $10 watermelon I can barely lift, listening to it roll around my trunk with every turn and stop sign. I buy a crate of peaches shipped from Georgia, a bag of cherries, and a pint of blueberries. I buy more tomatoes than one person really needs. I’m eating fruit salad for dinner, just because I feel like it. Humans have been making fruit salad — mixing more than one fruit together in one dish — for millennia. “Julius Caesar certainly ate fruit salad,” says University of North Texas history professor Mike Wise. “Every generation has their fruit salad.” Traditional American cookbooks included fruit salads for decades, but early versions leaned savory as appetizers or to pair with larger roasted meats. “It’s presentable, it’s fancy,” says Smithsonian curator Paula Johnson, who found references to fruit salad as we know it today — a mix of bananas, grapes, berries, and whatever fruit is on hand — in cookbooks as early as 1901. The 1927 Pillsbury Cookbook’s version calls for “2 oranges, 3 bananas, ½ pound white grapes, 12 English walnut meats, 1 head lettuce.” Cooks tossed these early fruit salads with a vinaigrette. By the 1950s and 1960s fruit salad went from appetizer to dessert, ensconced in gelatin or covered in newly available aerosol whipped cream. “A lot of these kinds of fruit salads were marketing initiatives,” says Wise. “It’s an inventive tradition.” Fruit salad became even more popular with the availability of frozen and canned fruit, from strawberries to kiwis. “When you look at any of these women’s magazines or community cookbooks, [they had] Jell-O salads with different kinds of fruits, and those were so easy to just pull out and try,” says Johnson. “There’s this paradox where it’s historically been [viewed as] a processed food, when fruit is viewed as healthy and fresh,” says Wise. Ambrosia, a popular mid-century take on fruit salad that was loose on the fruit and heavy on the whipped cream and marshmallows, represented the peak of what dessert fruit salad could be. Alton Brown’s recipe for the dish calls for heavy cream and sour cream. My grandmother — who I loved dearly but made most of her food from a can — would bring one every Thanksgiving. But by the 1960s and ’70s, consumers “began to reject the manufacturer,” adds Johnson. “The ethos shifts from less fussy, whipped-cream laden fruit salads to something that’s cut up and fresh.” Wise notes that ditching the gelatin allowed people to consider the fruit salad as a “low-calorie option, with less types of fruit in it.” My Mom’s 1975 edition of The Doubleday Cookbook instructed housewives to choose fruits based on contrasting size and texture, and to add a little crystalized ginger, mint, or liqueur for flavor. Growing up in the ’90s, most fruit salads I encountered strictly followed The Wiggles’ 1994 instructions: peel the bananas, toss in the grapes, chop up some apples and melon. (Do you have “Fruit salad, yummy yummy,” stuck in your head yet?) If we were lucky, a few mini-marshmallows got thrown in. It would sit, unloved and untouched, at every summer picnic, an unappetizing side dish stewing in its own juices, with little regard to the quality or seasonality of the fruit. McDonald’s, under pressure to offer low-calorie and low-fat choices to consumers, added a fruit and walnut salad in 2005 that might as well have been a yogurt parfait. (They’ve since replaced it with plain apple slices.) That’s not my fruit salad. Fruit salad, in today’s Instagrammable-everything world, is just as much about presentation as it is about taste. Contemporary fruit salad means leaning in to the joy of summer, even if that joy is contained in a few juicy bites of blueberries, tomatoes, and watermelon tossed in a lime vinaigrette. It’s experimenting with ways to mix fruit with herbs, spices, cheeses, or grains that my parents or grandparents never would have — like mixing watermelon, cucumber, and feta or wrapping melon with sage and prosciutto. I add fruit for a surprise sweetness and lightness, like pasta with smashed peaches and smoked mozzarella, or use fruit as a counterpoint to heat in a papaya and peanut fruit salad with mint like Boston favorite Myers + Chang does. “It’s a really popular salad in Vietnamese cuisine. We’ve had it on the menu since we opened,” says Joanne Chang, the owner and head chef. “It’s so refreshing, and it’s a great salad to eat between bites of anything.” Fruit salad shouldn’t be stuck as an unappetizing side dish or dessert. “I think fruit salads nowadays run the gamut between offering lots of different fruits,” says Chang. “It’s not just melon and grapes, but mango, papaya, dragonfruit, pomegranate seeds… it can be savory, salty, or sweet. You can really create a dish that goes way above and beyond [the ’90s fruit salads] I grew up with.” The fruit salad of today is the meal. I’ll try nectarines and corn tossed with pesto and wild rice, or arugula and watermelon with figs and goat cheese. I’ll mash avocados with bits of grapefruit, balsamic, and flaky salt. Or I’ll grab a handful of radishes with cultured butter and a slice of plum. But it doesn’t need to be fancy. And sometimes, when it’s been a very long day after a very long week after a very long month still stuck at home, it’s just three peaches, juice dripping into the sink. Kayla Voigt hails from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, the start of the Boston Marathon. You can usually find her at the summit of a mountain or digging into a big bowl of pasta. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3iOYPkd

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/09/fruit-salad-is-low-energy-meal-of-2020.html