Jamie Oliver’s Crunchy Thai Salad

Now I don’t usually write about recipes I’ve made before but it’s been a long long time since I’ve made this one, I stopped making it because Mr. Lacer can’t stand its smell! But don’t believe him, it smells gorgeous!

It’s a ‘getting on a bit’ Jamie Oliver recipe this one from I think the second Naked Chef book but you just can’t beat his early books, these days I find his more recent books a little bit too ‘posh’. I still love him but I much preferred him in his London warehouse flat days. Anyway I’ve found the recipe for you here on the Food Network (be patient, it takes a while to load or is that just my really poorly laptop?) but basically it’s lots of crunchy, fresh salad vegetables, whatever you like / whatever you’ve got in the fridge (I used bean sprouts, red pepper, rocket, cucumber and chilli today),mixed with some cold egg noodles if you want to make it a bit more substantial and the piece de resistance of this dish the thai dressing, go to the food network page for the full recipe but basically olive oil, sesame oil, soy sauce, brown sugar, lime juice, ginger, garlic and chilli (although I skip the chilli as I put it in the salad).

Talking of chilli, this salad was my first use of my first crop of ring of fire chillies. They came on later than my other chilli plants, the ones that produced the fatter chillies. I thought that my thinner ring of fire chillies would taste even hotter than my fatter chillies but actually, well how can I put it, they’re in a different league to each other, it’s like comparing red and white wine. My fatter chillies (it annoys me that I don’t know their full name but I wasn’t supplied with it) have a sharp chilli burn pretty much as soon as you put them in your mouth, they are hot chillies! Whereas my ring of fire chillies start off with this lovely gentle warmth that grows on you and it’s only once you’ve eaten a whole dish with the chillies in (I used half a chilli) do you realise your lips are burning!