AMYS LARB

AMY'S LARB
1 pound ground chicken or turkey
1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce (see update below)
1 tablespoons lime juice
3 tablespoons fresh mint, chopped *
3 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons shallots or onion, chopped
2 green onions, chopped
1/2 teaspoon cayenne *
1 teaspoon sambal oelek or Asian chili paste
8 romaine lettuce leaves, 1/2 ounce each

In a medium skillet or wok, brown the chicken; drain any excess fat. Add the remaining ingredients and heat through. Serve wrapped in lettuce leaves, using two small leaves per serving.

Makes 4 servings
Can be frozen without the lettuce

* I left out the mint because I didn't have any and I didn't think I'd like it anyway. I omitted the cayenne because the chili paste I used is very hot.

Per Serving: 257 Calories; 17g Fat; 21g Protein; 3g Carbohydrate; trace Dietary Fiber; 3g Net Carbs

This is from Amy's Eating Low website. Click here to watch a video of Amy making this dish. I thought the flavor of this dish was fine, especially along with the crunchy lettuce, but I don't think I would have liked it without the strong flavor of the cilantro to mask the pungent flavor of the fish sauce. To go along with this, I made some Stir-Fried Bok Choy with Ginger & Soy and ended up mixing the veggies into the Larb for a more complex dish. What you see in the photo is the Larb before combining the two dishes.

UPDATE: I had to adjust the counts because I don't think that MasterCook had the correct numbers for fish sauce. I know that it varies by brand depending on how much sugar they put in it, but I think that MasterCook probably is talking about something different than Asian fish sauce because the carbs seemed to be too high. I also watched Amy's video again and she didn't use fish sauce in hers. She used oyster sauce, which is quite a bit higher in carbs than fish sauce. They are completely different things. Fish sauce is thin like soy sauce and oyster sauce is very thick and sweet. I can see why Amy liked her Larb more than I did because oyster sauce has a wonderful flavor. If you want to make this with oyster sauce, below are the counts. The carbs per tablespoon of oyster sauce do vary by brand though. These counts are for oyster sauce with 5 carbs per tablespoon:

Per Serving: Per Serving: 257 Calories; 17g Fat; 21g Protein; 5g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 4g Net Carbs

I looked up Larb online and found this description on Wikipedia:

"Larb (Thai) or Laap or Larp or Laab is a type of Lao meat salad. It is most often made with chicken, beef, duck, turkey, pork or even fish, flavored with fish sauce and lime. The meat can be either raw or cooked; it is minced and mixed with chilli, mint and, optionally, assorted vegetables. Roughly ground toasted rice (kao kua) is also a very important component of the dish. The dish is served at room temperature and usually with a serving of sticky rice. A common variation is neu-ah nam tok ("waterfall beef"), in which beef is cut into thin strips instead of using ground beef.

Larb is the unofficial national dish of Laos and is also very popular in Thailand. It is quite common to see this popular Lao meat salad served at Thai restaurants.

There is also a variant from Northern Thailand which does not use lime or fish sauce, but rather other local condiments for flavor and seasoning."

You'll find some links to other Larb recipes on the Wikipedia page. If you go to the link below, you'll find descriptions of some of the unusual ingredients in this recipe.

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