Viet Style Chicken Salad (by G)

Lately Biggs and I have been persistently battling against food wastage - tonight's target for me was a bunch of limes. Biggs is dining out so had all 3 of those sweet, sweet limes all to myself.

First off I made some nuoc cham sauce (or maybe it was nuoc mam cham - I'm not sure what the difference is) from half a lime, some sugar, fish sauce, white vinegar, garlic and chilli. Then I marinated some leftover chicken in sugar, fish sauce and - just before serving - the rest of the first lime.  I fried the chicken over a hot electric fire then added some spring onion tops, the rest of the garlic and some chilli.  Lastly I built a salad from grated carrot, cucumber (water squeezed out), spring onion, a whole bunch of coriander tops and the remainder of the chilli. From there it was a matter of dressing and plating up the salad, elegantly arranging the chicken and gagging it down.

Actually, this was a pretty good one - well balanced and fragrant and probably healthy, but in a good way...