Incredibly Fragrant & Delicious Thai Larb Recipe!

Punchy, vibrant, zingy and in your face, this is my version of a Thai Larb. Welcome back to another episode of Wok Wednesdays. It's Chet here at School of Wok. We've just decided, or rather I just decided today, I was just going to make a quick little easy recipe, snackish recipe. You could use it as a side dish for your next Thai inspired dinner. We are going to make some Larb, okay? But not the usual Larb that you see. We're just going to jazz that up a little bit using some other ingredients that I couldn't find or could find in place of other ingredients. Anyway, you get the idea. Let's get on with it. First of all, Khao Khoa, you have to make Khao Khoa in order to make Larb. It's basically just toasted rice. In here, some sticky glutenous rice, which I earlier just kind of toasted until it got really nice and yellowy and really kind of golden brown. Then what you need to do also is just use some lime leaves in there and then just straight into a mortar. You're going to have to bash it up really until it's nice and fine and ground up. We will see you on the other side because this is going to take a long time, I have a feeling. Great. After you've done your rice, no matter how you do your rice, it's all up to you. We are going to pan fry some pork mince in here. It could be pork, it could be chicken, it could be turkey, any kind of protein you want, but today we are doing pork. In here, frying pan, we're going to get a little bit of oil in there. Pork goes in. Nice sizzle there. Then we're just going to break this up a little bit and then we're just going to let it cook. In the meantime, I'm just going to smash up and chop up some lemongrass. I don't know why I didn't prep this in advance. I just thought it might be nice to set myself a challenge. I don't know. I don't know what's going on here today. Lemongrass, we just want to finely chop it down and add that to the pork whilst it is just cooking. Just finely chop down and shred it down. You want it fairly fine because you don't want to be biting into a big chunk of lemongrass when you are eating your larp. I'm just going to give my pork a little bit of a stir here, make sure that nothing is sticking to my frying pan. You can do this in a wok, a frying pan, a saucepan, really up to you. I would just say now, full disclaimer as well, lots of different versions of larp out there. This is not the one definitive. Even in Thailand, depending on the region that you're in, larp will present itself very differently. So then when your pork mince is all kind of cooked through completely, get your lemongrass in. You want to get some very lightening or rather some aromatic flavour in there because sometimes, you know, with pork it can be a little bit gamey. So that lemongrass is just going to lighten everything, bring everything just a note higher. And then whilst that's cooking and simmering, I'm just going to chop down some garlic just to kind of get some of that pungent flavour in there. Because remember, we're still in Thailand, still making Thai food. So we want everything to be nice and punchy. So garlic in a jiffy, done, straight in. Give it a quick stir. So it's all starting to come together. It is browning a little bit underneath, so I'm just going to get a little bit of water in there and it's going to help to deglaze the pan to make it a little bit safer for me. Oh gosh, this is smelling really nice already, guys. So now, what we're going to do is we're also going to get some red onion in there. You could substitute with a shallot as well. In fact, in Thailand, usually we just use like a Thai shallot. Very carefully slice down and in fact, dice up some bits of red onion. I'm just using a small little red onion, in fact, only half of the red onion. So that can just go in there as a substitute for the shallots. There, I think that should probably be enough. You want it very finely chopped up. In fact, with the larb, it does kind of help if everything is finely chopped or finely diced up. It just helps with the eating experience of it all. I'm just going to mix that through. I'm just going to let that heat from the pan gently soften the onions. And then we've got some aromatics here in the form of some chilies. I'm going in with three bird's eyes, but you can obviously adjust it according to how you like it. Heat and spice is not always a necessity when it comes to Thai food. It just depends on how you like spice, I suppose. I always kind of subscribe to the view. I mean, you don't need that much heat in your life if you can't stand it. And there's no point also burning your mouth and burning your tongue with heat because afterwards you just can't taste anything at all. So this amount of chilies is just enough for me. So three bird's eye chilies in there. You could also use chili flakes as well. Dried chili flakes as a substitute. In fact, that's very often used in Thailand. Okay, so this is now starting to really come together. Some coriander. Could use some mint as well if you wanted to. If you had some mint around today. Just coriander for me. Thai sweet basil if you like. And obviously if you hate coriander, hey pal, don't put it in. It's okay. It's fine. It's totally fine. No one's going to come after you. Some lime juice needs to go in there for a bit of that sourness. Okay, so you want to squeeze in plenty of lime. It should be salty, sour. It should be a little bit sweet and just kind of really well balanced and singing like a choir. Okay, now I've just reduced the heat on the hob just a little bit because I don't want to burn or worse, I don't want to boil off too much of that lime juice because if it does, it's going to go a little bit bitter. So just want to maintain and retain that freshness of that lime juice in the dish. I'm going to keep one half of the lime juice just for now. Just keep it separate for now. If I need more later on, I can add more. Some nam pla, so some fish sauce. In fact, I think that's a little bit too little. I might need to get a little bit more in later on. And then some palm sugar, which at the moment, hard as rock. But once it goes in, it should start to kind of dissolve and I'm just going to give it a really good mix and mix away until the cows come home or until the palm sugar dissolves. You could also, I mean, if you didn't have palm sugar, don't feel you've got to get palm sugar. Caster sugar works fine. You just want to have something a little bit sweet in there. Okay, I'm just going to turn this off now and I'm just going to have a little taste here because it's definitely really important. Never serve food to other people that you have not tasted yourself. Definitely got the sweetness. I feel like it needs a little something else. I think it needs more fish sauce, for sure. So that funkiness, saltiness, umami just needs a little bit of that oomph in there and maybe also a little bit of acidity. So that's going to be the lime juice. I'm just going to get more lime juice in there and I've just turned off the heat now, so that lime juice should be absolutely fine. You don't want to cook that lime juice, like I said earlier. I'm just going to mix that through and if you, in case you're wondering why is he cooking with like a tablespoon, that's actually what I'm actually very used to. Having worked in restaurants, we used to just cook portions with tablespoons. So that is now ready and don't forget the last thing, khao kua. Your toasted rice needs to go in. Obviously, I'm not going to use everything but you need a fair amount for that completion of that dish. So that khao kua, that creamy nuttiness from the rice, that's going to really, really come through in the larb and you need that in order to balance all of the sharp flavours. So this is now done. I'm just going to get it all out. I can smell that creamy rice in there already and then what you can do if you want to, just a little sprinkle of that rice on the top if you want. Could follow with some coriander and some mint if you like. I'm just going to go in with maybe some spring onions just to break up the monotony a little bit. There you go. That is my version of a Thai pork larb. Right, well here it goes. I'm just going to do a little bit of tasting here. Hopefully not too spicy. Mmm. Oh, robust, pungent, strong, really forward. I mean that is what you want with a larb. It's not a shy little thing, you know. It's not a shy wallflower. It really needs to be out there mingling with the crowd. Very extroverted dish. That's what a larb is. 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