Palin's mackerel lettuce wrap (miang pla too)
The addition to your holiday party menu you never knew it needed.
SERVES
2
TO
3
Ingredients
For the lettuce wrap:
- 2 mackerel fillets
- A head of green leaf lettuce or romaine lettuce, smaller inner leaves only (so it's easier to wrap)
- 90 grams rice vermicelli (small size), or somen noodles
- 1 head shallot, thinly sliced and halved lengthwise if long
- 5 centimeter knob ginger, peeled and thinly julienned
- 1/4 cup roasted peanuts
For the lettuce wrap sauce:
- 4 cloves garlic
- 2 green Thai chilies
- 1 1/2 cup cilantro, both stems and leaves, roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons fish sauce
- 1 tablespoon palm sugar, finely chopped, packed (or light brown sugar)
- 3 tablespoons lime juice
Directions
For the noodles:
- Bring a pot of water to a boil, add the noodles and boil until tender, about nine minutes for the small rice noodles, and two minutes if using somen noodles (no need to salt the water). Once done, transfer noodles into a bowl of cold water to cool them down and rinse off the starch.
- Pull a small amount of noodles from the water with your fingers, dab off excess water with paper towel, then arrange the noodles on a plate in small bundles.
For the sauce:
- Put all sauce ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. The sauce will be quite loose, but if it looks too runny, you can add a bit more cilantro and an extra clove of garlic to thicken it up.
For the fish:
- Pan sear the mackerel filet over medium heat in a little bit of oil for about one and a half minutes per side until fully cooked.
- Once it has cooled slightly, remove pin bones that run through the middle of the filet either with a pair of tweezers or your fingers.
- Cut into small bite-sized pieces.
Assembly: Serve all ingredients on a nice platter, and each diner can make their own little bite-sized wrap as they eat!
