Laotian Laap

Laap (or larp) is considered the Laotian national dish and as such it is served in pretty much every restaurant you go to. It is refreshing in the heat and adds a zing to your day with the mix of spices and herbs it contains. I have also seen it in Thai cookbooks, but then I guess the cuisines here overlap quite often... 

Laap can be prepared with beef, buffalo (as in the photo above - might be a bit more tricky to find in Europe), chicken, pork or fish and vegetarians may substitute the meet with tofu, mushroom and/or potato. 

As with most dishes in Laos, sticky rice is never very far and you can find the recipe for the latter in the next post!

Ingredients (serves  3-4):

300g ground beef 

1 tsb salt

2 tsb fish sauce

2 garlic cloves

1 small onion

2 lemongrass stalks

1 tsp chicken stock

2 tsp dried chilli powder

2-3 bird's eye chillies (depends on your spice tolerance)

2 tbsp fresh coriander (about 4 stems)

2 tbsp fresh galangal

4 small (or 2 big) spring onions

3 tbsp fresh mint (small bunch)

1 bunch of Thai saw coriander (cilantro)

2 kaffir lime leaves

1 lime

2 snake beans or a handful of French beans

1 fresh banana flower (might be impossible to get at home so just leave it out)

Handful of bean sprouts

2 tbsp sticky rice powder (see below for instructions)

Lettuce leaves and/or watercress for serving

Preparation:

First, prepare the sticky rice powder: roast dry sticky rice (unwashed!) in a pan until it turns brown. Then pulverise it in a mortar.

Lightly sauté the beef in a pan with the salt and 1 tsb of fish sauce. Remove it from the heat, add a squeeze of lime juice and set it aside.

Finely chop the garlic, onions, lemongrass (only the white core), chillies, galangal and kaffir lime leaves. Roughly chop the mint, coriander (both), beans and spring onions. If you have succeeded in procuring a banana flower, peel the outer layers (the pink ones) of the flower and thinly slice the white section into a bowl of cold water. Careful, the sap stains and is impossible to get out of clothes (I speak from experience)! Mix all ingredients together and add the fish sauce and sticky rice powder. Squeeze in some lemon juice if you like and then serve the laap with the lettuce leaves and sticky rice.