Laotian

Slowly caramelized sugar, sweet lychees, warming spices, and fiery ginger create the perfect base for tofu to simmer in.

This riff on the Laotian classic comes together in 20 minutes.

This Lao-style larb recipe from chef Kris Yenbamroong is tangy, spicy, and packed with umami.

This Laotian-style rice salad is crunchy, spicy, sour, and bright. Store-bought red curry paste and skillet-crisped rice keep it fast and weeknight friendly.

Delightfully soft yet chewy Thai sticky rice is traditionally prepared in a bamboo basket set over a metal pot of boiling water, but you can easily replicate the method at home with a saucepan and a fine-mesh sieve.

Lara Lee’s meat-free version of the Laotian and Thai dish combines smoked tofu with pops of crunchy sesame seeds and a kick of lime dressing.

The curry and ground pork reference the origins of the dish, while the brussels sprouts and leeks are a nod to the local ingredients of Georgia, from chef Parnass Savang of Talat Market.

Don’t even think about tossing, stirring, or shaking that pan until the mushrooms are golden brown and crisp.

Larb will not only fill your belly, it will teach you how to balance sweet, sour, salty, spicy, funky, and umami flavors.

Cauliflower might not be a traditional ingredient in larb recipes, but the toasted rice powder is.

Larb is hailed as the national dish of Laos. Traditionally the salad starts with extremely finely chopped lean meat or fish and is seasoned with lime juice, chiles, fish sauce, and toasted ground rice. This recipe calls for ground lamb, a fattier protein than what’s usually used, and subs ground peanuts as a nod to the texture of the rice.

Grilled medium or medium rare, the delicious meat pulls from the built-in skewer (aka the bones), and you salivate even more as you chew.

If you have the homemade red curry paste on hand, this sauce comes together pretty fast and will last five days, sealed tightly and refrigerated.

A simple and refreshing relish for grilled meats. You can make the vinegar and sugar dressing up to six weeks ahead of time (store it in the fridge), but assemble the relish the day you plan to serve it.

This Laotian version of arroz con pollo is a rich, flavorful, and gorgeous one-pot dish, unusual and quite easy. See page 500 for information on Thai fish sauce (nam pla).

You could call this chicken salad Thai-style, but whatever you call it—you’ll see larb, larp, laarb, and other variations on menus—this is a quick, delicious, appetite-rousing starter. Teaming it with any of the more substantial Thai dishes in this book and some rice makes for an impressive meal. (If you need information on nam pla, see page 500.) Most laarb served in this country is made from chicken, and certainly that’s good and easy. But laarb is even more delicious made with pork shoulder or beef tenderloin. In any case, this is one place where you should mince the meat together with the garlic by hand; food-processed meat is just a little too mushy here. The process shouldn’t take more than five minutes, though, so don’t be put off.

In its traditional form, this classic Lao soup is made with noodles rolled out and cut to order for each bowl. It is still excellent made with dried rice noodles. You can substitute fish, chicken, or pork for the beef, but rice noodles are an essential ingredient. The Lao like a considerable amount of lime juice in their food—here a range is given so that you can flavor the soup to your taste.

Anywhere you go in Laos, you will find women patiently preparing papaya for this salad. Using a small machete-like knife, they make repeated shallow parallel cuts, each about 1/8 inch deep, in a section of the papaya. Then they scrape the papaya from top to bottom so they end up with very nice julienne. A food processor fitted with the julienne disk or a manual slicer such as a mandoline works equally well.