I have to be honest with you, this is my first time making this salad. I've tried this dish many time, loving it but never put any effort to make. My initial thought for this week cooking contest would be a simple and easy salad that I often prepare for my Wednesday dinner with a bag of green (lettuce, rocket, young spinach leaves), cucumbers, capsicums, carrots and tomatoes.
However, I recently had a chat with @snownz008 and she mentioned about making our Vietnamese chicken salad. It has been quite long I haven't had that dish and the fact that I just had half of the cooked chicken in the fridge made the idea sounds awesome. So for the contest this week, I present to you my psychedelic version of Vietnamese chicken salad, also known as Gỏi Gà.
Every Sunday I wake up early to go to a farmer market near home. I prefer to shop for our veggies and fruits there as it is much cheaper than supermarkets. I think it is a simple way to support our local farmers. In addition, if I want to get asian herbs and veggies, this is a place to go.
The most important ingredient for this dish, you might guess is chicken, but for me, it is the Vietnamese coriander. If you don't have that herb, it will be hard to create the unique flavour of the Vietnamese Salad. I have to say it is not easy for me to find it in NZ but thankfully, I found a Vietnamese farmer who sells this herb in the market.
Ingredients for 2 people
- 2 chicken breasts (optional)
- 1 onion
- 1 carrot
- Half of a capsicum
- A bunch of Vietnamese coriander
- A quater of a red or white cabbage. If it is small, take half instead
- Some lettuce leaves and mung bean sprout (optional)
- 3 garlic cloves
- 3 slice of ginger as shown in the image above
- Half of lemon
- 1 teaspoon of sugar
- 3 teaspoons of fish sauce
- 5 teaspoons of cold water
- Fried onions and roasted peanut (optional)
Preparation
Step 1: Cook the chicken
Just a quick note that for Vietnamese, with this salad we can either use breasts or chicken legs. But to make it easier, I suggest buying chicken breasts. All you need to do is boil it with a slice of ginger and a quarter of an onion until fully cooked. As I already had half of the chicken cooked in the fridge, I just need to shred the meat into long and thin slices to go with the salad. This is optional so if you are vegetarians or you just don't want to cook the chicken, just ignore this step.
Step 2: Wash and Slice the vegetables
First, wash all the veggies ingredients with water. Then
- Slice the onion thin and soak it in a bowl of cold water and vinegar to remove the smell for around 15 minutes. You can soak the onion slices in boiling water if the smell is still too strong.
- Chop the red cabbage, and soak with another bowl of cold water with vinegar and salt to remove the dirt from the cabbage and lettuce leaves. After 15 minutes, remove it from the bowl and let it dry.
- Grade the carrot and slice the capsicum
Step 3: Make the dressing
Mince garlic and ginger, then add 1 teaspoon of sugar, squeeze half of a lemon juice, 5 teaspoons of water and 3 teaspoons of fish sauce. Mix well and it will be ready for the salad. If you don't like this dressing, just use your normal way to dress your salad. My partner said he prefers to have it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and it is still fine.
Step 4: Put all the ingredients together in a big bowl and mix well with the dressing.
Remember do not put all the dressing at once as it might be too much for you.
If you have mung been sprout, you can add them too. I make plenty of them every week using a milk carton box as it goes well with my salad, noodle soups and fried eggs. What a great way of eating home-grown mung bean sprout.
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To make the psychedelic version of Vietnamese salad, I added two ingredients that you don't see in my recipe. They are edible flowers that I found in my neighborhood, wild onion flowers and Nasturtium. So it is totally up to you to add any edible flowers you like to make the salad colourful.
As I mentioned at the beginning, this is my first time preparing this dish. I have to say I am not 100% satisfy with the result as I forgot to get roasted peanut. I added the cashew nuts instead but it doesn't taste the same. Also, I prefer to grate the garlic and ginger for the dressing than chopping it with a knife.
Fortunately, the chicken soup that I made to eat with the salad was really good. It goes so well with a bit of pepper and the chopped Vietnamese coriander leaves.
Now let's talk Nutritional Value
We all know the benefits of eating real food so salad is always a great option to get all the nutrition in their most natural state. By adding garlic and ginger in the dressing, together with the antioxidant-like properties in the Vietnamese coriander, this dish will help to strengthen our immune system and protect the body against free radical damage. If you experience heavy digestion, bloating or bacterial infection, the dish is a good option to help you treat these symptoms. (Scr)
This is my entry post for THE MEDICINAL COOKING COMPETITION WEEK 2: PSYCHEDELIC SALAD created by @ecotrain. I wasn't sure if I should make this post to share with you as I am no expert at making this dish. However, I believe it will get better over time.
All photos in this post are mine and I used Canva to design the banners.
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