Spaghetti Salad

Spaghetti Salad

Pictured above is one serving of the salad. Leftovers store well in the fridge for 2-3 days. This is a good item to serve at brunch, for lunch or at a potluck.

Htamin Laphet Thoke

 

Htamin Laphet Thoke

A cup of cooked long grain rice was mixed into Laphet Thoke for a sumptuous lunch. Tea Leaves Salad is a famous Burmese dish that is so easy to make. Once the ingredients are procured, all that is needed is for everything to be dumped into a bowl and mixed thoroughly by hand.

 Ingredients

Thai Pork Salad - Nam Sod

Nam-Sod

Nam Sod with Vermicelli Noodles

This is a popular salad item found on Thai menus that is generally made with minced pork, but also tastes great with minced chicken. It's light and delicious as a salad, but I always make extra so that I can add vermicelli noodles and carrots for lunch the next day.

Egg and Onion Salad Dressed in Mustard Oil

Egg and Onion Salad

Dressed In Mustard Oil

A suitable side dish to accompany biryani or khichuri, this simple egg salad is dressed in mustard oil. The original recipe was posted in a food group on Facebook. This was made with a couple of changes to that recipe. 

Tomato and Onion Raita

Tomato and Onion Raita

Raita is an Indian salad that is tossed with a yogurt dressing. It cools the palate which makes it the ideal accompaniment to a spicy meal. It goes well with rich biryanis and pulaos or with a simple naan or any Indian bread.

Bhel - Chickpeas and Potatoes Salad

Bhel

Chickpeas and diced, boiled potatoes tossed with tomatoes, onions, green chillies, cilantro and bhel puri masala made a refreshing salad for lunch. The bhel puri masala kit, which I keep on hand,  is available in Indian markets. I've served this as an appetizer with mini pita pockets for friends at dinner.  

Onion and Tomato Raita

Onion and Tomato Raita

Raita is a cold salad, often served with a festive Indian meal, that helps to mellow the heat in spicy dishes. A dressing of Greek yogurt cools the body. 

A salsa of diced onions, tomatoes, green chilies and cilantro is dressed with Greek yogurt that is cooling to the body. Unlike a salad which is eaten as a first course, Raita is eaten along with other components of an Indian meal.

Burmese Thayet Thee Thoke - Green Mango Salad

Thayet Thee Thoke

Thayet Thee (mango) Thoke (hand-mixed salad) is a common accompaniment to a Burmese meal during the mango season which runs April through June. Look for unripe mangoes that have a dark-green peel and are hard to the touch.

They are sour, slightly sweet and crunchy, and are ideal in a salad.

Strange to say, we hardly ever cooked Burmese food at home while we lived in Burma because our neighbours were only too willing to share their meals with us. One couple, in particular, did not have any children so we were always welcome in their home. Street vendors, selling all kinds of snacks or meals, shouted their wares through our neighbourhoods from early morning throughout the day until late into the night. So we ate and learned to love Burmese food through their wares.

Because the mangoes are so flavourful, very little else is needed in this salad. Typical salad ingredients are deep fried onions, deep fried garlic and chili flakes, roasted chickpea flour, raw thinly sliced onions, a spicy oil such as chili oil or wasabi oil, cilantro and green chilies.

Serve each ingredient separately, like in a salad bar, and mix individual portions as needed. This salad should be eaten as soon as possible after combining the ingredients to maintain their structural integrity.

Hand-Mixed Green Mango Salad

Eggplant Salad with Yogurt Dressing

Begun-er Raita

Raita is an Indian side dish or salad of yogurt containing chopped cucumber or other vegetables and spices. It is usually served alongside rich dishes like biryani, pulao or with kababs. The yogurt dressing helps to tone down spicy dishes, soothing the palate with its creaminess. Greek yogurt is a good option, as opposed to regular unflavoured yogurt, because it is already drained of its whey, making it thick and creamy.

Cutting the eggplants into thick rondelles and lightly frying them preserves the integrity and texture of the vegetable, otherwise eggplants tend to break down easily and turn mushy. Marinating the rondelles of eggplant with salt and powdered spices like turmeric, fennel and Kashmiri mirch (paprika) serves to saturate the eggplants with flavor from the inside out.

To keep the yogurt dressing from curdling or separating, it is added and stirred into the eggplants after removing the skillet from the heat source. This salad tastes best if it is chilled in the refrigerator prior to serving.

Asian Vermicelli Chicken Salad

Asian Vermicelli Chicken Salad

A light & fresh salad that is perfect for the hot days of August, this glass noodle salad is versatile and so tasty! 

Chopped Fresh Ingredients &
Rotisserie Chicken

Combine any variety of fresh, salad ingredients along with a protein, whip up an Asian dressing and it's ready to eat in less than 15 minutes. On the cutting mat clockwise from top left are rotisserie chicken, green onions, romaine lettuce, glass noodles with shredded lime leaves sprinkled on top, English seedless cucumbers, beefsteak tomatoes, sliced onions and wedges of lime. Before serving, the salad is garnished with crunchy ramen noodles (omit for gluten-free diets) and sliced almonds.

Burmese Htamin Let Thoke - Hand-Tossed Noodle & Rice Salad

Burmese Htamin Let Thoke

Also known as Let Thoke Sone or A-Thoke, this carb-rich salad is a popular street food in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). Htamin (rice) Let (hand) Thoke (tossed/mixed), like many other Burmese hand-tossed salads, is made from 12 or more ingredients, most of which are readily available in your local supermarkets. Specialty items like deep-fried onions and garlic can be made from scratch, but is a laborious process. Asian markets stock those along with spicy shrimp floss for which I like to use Balachaung as a substitute. Tamarind paste also is available in Asian and Indian markets.

Easiest Potato Salad

Potato Salad

Summer's just around the corner which makes this the ideal time for backyard bargeques and picnics. Potato Salad is the easiest and most portable of picnic foods that is sure to please all, big and small. I was requested to make a Ranch Potato Salad for my son's Mother's Day BBQ not too long ago. 

Mother's Day Gift

There are few more satisfying stages in life than being a grandmother. We have three gregarious Grand-Boys and the eldest gifted me this plant stand made lovingly by his own two hands. The tulip and leaves are made of foam and the pot holder is made of wood. It holds a live flowering plant and I love it!

So Simple & Easy to Make

The potato salad was so easy to make. Red-skin potatoes were either quartered or halved and boiled just until al-dente. The potatoes were left skin-on and were dropped in boiling water and simmered for exactly 10 minutes. The best way to test for doneness is to stick the tip of a knife into the skin and if the potato falls off the knife without difficulty, they're done.

Just 5 Ingredients

The salad needs just 5 ingredients and requires only a quick toss of the potatoes with the other four ingredients. It was chilled for six hours and tasted perfect served right out of the fridge. 

Sweet-Lime Salad

Sweet-Lime Salad

Chinese Seasoning Salt for Fruits

The perfect pick-me-up between meals, the sweet-lime this morning was not sweet enough for my palate, which prompted me to turn it into a salad. A friend from Taiwan brought me these tiny packages of seasoning salt for fruits which are sweet, sour and salty. I added a diced serrano pepper and minced mint which took it over the top! Let it sit for a few minutes after prepping to allow the flavours to meld.

To make your own seasoning salt, stir together the juice of 1/2 lime along with salt and sugar to taste.

Easy Chicken Salad

2 lbs. of Chicken Salad

Chicken Salad Crescent Sandwiches

Chicken Salad Meal

It's best to use fresh chicken breasts for a pure white color, but canned or shredded rotisserie chicken also works. To poach fresh chicken breasts, place them in a saucepan large enough to hold them in a single layer. Add cold water so it just covers the chicken. Bring to a boil and simmer over medium-low heat until chicken is cooked, about 15-20 minutes. Transfer chicken to a cutting board and allow to cool before dicing.

Water chestnuts add extra crunch to this salad and can be found in Meijer's Chinese section of the International aisle. They come sliced in 8 ounces (226 gm.) cans.

Mohinga Thoke - Burmese Cold Noodle Salad

Mohinga Thoke 

Prepped Ingredients

An Internet recipe served as the basis for this salad but I made many adjustments to suit my taste. The addition of dark sesame oil (toasted), fried legumes (pei kyaw) and minced green chilies pumped up the heat along with added crunch and flavour. Blanching the shredded cabbage is how I prefer to use it in Burmese salads. My husband and fiercest food critic ate every last crumb on his plate while his eyes watered and his scalp perspired. It was made with just me in mind so the peppers were diced with the seeds intact, but he asked to try it and loved it!

The recipe called for rice vermicelli, but all I had was tapioca vermicelli that had no instructions on the package. My first attempt at cooking these noodles turned to mush, so I soaked the noodles in hot tap water and microwaved on high power at 30 second intervals for a total of 2 minutes with excellent results.

Note: There's no need to add salt because the fish sauce is salty enough.

Cucumber and Onion Salad with Dill

Cucumber and Onion Salad with Dill

Fresh herbs in the supermarket come in big bundles so I made a stir-fry using eggplant and potatoes and flavoured it with dill and used the rest of the bundle for this salad. 

My love for dill began in Toronto in the late 1970s at the home of a girl who was born and raised in Iran. She invited us over for a fabulous dinner, and the one item that stood out that I remember to this day was a pulao she made with steamed Basmati rice that she mixed, by hand, with salt, dill and olive oil.

Recently we went to a French-inspired Vietnamese restaurant and ordered grilled Tilapia flavoured with turmeric and dill. It's an outstanding dish unlike anything I've had before.

This salad can be paired with biryani, pulao or grilled meat, fish or seafood. It would also taste great in a sandwich. I found the recipe on the Epicurious website.

Tuna, Chickpeas & Potato Salad

Tuna, Chickpeas & Potato Salad

Tuna salad, potato salad and chickpeas/garbanzo beans individually are among my favourite foods. Here, all three were combined with red and orange rainbow peppers to produce a refreshing salad when it's chilled and served for lunch. The dressing is composed of yogurt, mixed with ranch dressing and the salad is garnished with green onions.

Burmese Tofu Salad

Tofu Salad

I've been trying to include more protein in my diet, so tofu has featured on my grocery list  of late. I have it in Miso Soup and thought why not substitute soybean tofu for chickpea tohu. Admittedly, it's not half as tasty as Burmese Tohu Salad, but it satiated my craving for Burmese flavours just as well. I used dry balachaung and pickled jalapeno peppers to garnish the salad.

Burmese Cauliflower Salad

Baked Cauliflower Salad

There was a main dish already prepared for dinner today and a cauliflower in the fridge that needed to be used up. The first thing that comes to mind when I think cauliflower is the Indian Alu Gobi, but it was too complicated at that late hour. 

Then I remembered coming across a Burmese recipe for a roasted cauliflower salad that was very easy and doable at short notice. 

So here is an adaptation of that recipe which, for my taste buds, used too much shrimp powder, fish sauce and lime juice. So I toned down those ingredients and ramped up the garlic also because I wanted to give vegetarians the option of omitting shrimp powder and fish sauce. The black sesame seeds used as a garnish was replaced with deep-fried flat beans (Burmese: pe hlaw kyaw) because I was out of sesame seeds.

Uncertain what it would taste like, I was pleasantly surprised how very good this tasted. Hubby took a second and third helping, so it may be a frequent item at our dinner table!

Ingredients:

1 head cauliflower, cut into small florets

4 Tbsp. vegetable oil

salt to taste

1 tsp. garlic powder

1 small red onion, diced

6 cloves garlic, diced

1 green chili, diced

1 generous handful cilantro, diced

1 lime, zested and juiced

1 Tbsp. dried shrimp powder (optional for vegetarians)

2 tsp. fish sauce (optional for vegetarians)

salt to taste

deep-fried flat beans (pe hlaw kyaw) for garnish

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400*F.
2. Toss cauliflower florets with next three ingredients and spread in a single layer on a baking pan.
3. Bake at 400*F for 15 minutes, turn florets over and bake for another 15 minutes until golden brown.
4. Remove cauliflower from oven and transfer to a mixing bowl, along with remaining ingredients, except fried flat beans.
5. Toss until well combined, adjust salt to tast and garnish with deep-fried flat beans.

Serve as a side dish with steamed rice.

Burmese Tomato Salad - Kha Yan Chin Thee Thoke

Burmese Tomato Salad

This is a light and refreshing salad that is always polished off by our guests in the blink of an eye. It could be because it's served as a first course and the crowd is hungry, but I think the soft texture of the tomatoes contrasting with the crunchiness of the onions, deep-fried beans and lettuce have a lot to do with this being a favorite at our Burmese table.

Line the salad dish with finely sliced romaine lettuce and mound the tomatoes and other ingredients over the lettuce so that the juices from the tomatoes and dressing can drain to the bottom, leaving the tomatoes from getting soggy.

This salad is best served chilled for at least an hour. The dressing can be poured on the salad just prior to serving.

Ingredients:

1 romaine lettuce heart, sliced thinly

1 small onion, peeled, halves and sliced in thin crescents

5 medium tomatoes, halved and sliced in thin crescents

1 handful cilantro, 1/4 left whole and the rest minced

Juice of 1 lime

1 tsp. fish sauce (optional for vegetarians)

salt to taste

2 Tbsp. deep fried beans (if available)

2 Tbsp. roasted peanuts, chopped

1 Tbsp. deep fried onions

1 tsp. deep fried garlic

Directions:

1. Soak sliced onions in cold water for 15-20 minutes and drain.
2. Combine sliced tomatoes, onions, minced cilantro and season with salt.
3. Chill until ready to serve.
4. Line salad dish with lettuce and mound tomato mixture on top along with juices.
5. Whisk lime juice and fish sauce together and pour over tomatoes.
6. Garnish with last 4 ingredients and serve.