Ming says: This dipping sauce, fresh with herbs and tangy with lime, is Blue Ginger's most requested recipe. It's particularly awesome with our crispy calamari as well as with spring rolls, dumplings, and similar bites. It's based on the traditional Thai dip called cha-gio, which gets its savor from fish sauce. That salty ingredient is nicely balanced with lime juice.
The herbs darken as the sauce ages; this isn't a taste problem (quite the opposite, as the flavor deepens over time) but the sauce will loose its looks. If this bothers you, make and store the sauce "base" only, then chop and add herbs an hour before serving it. Or strain out any tired herbs from "old" sauce and replace them with fresh.
Makes about 5 cups
- 2 cups Thai fish sauce (nam pla)
- 3 cups fresh or bottled lime juice
- 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
- 1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
- 1/2 cup chopped fresh mint
- 1 tablespoon peeled and minced fresh ginger
- In a large nonreactive bowl, combine the ingredients and mix. Use or store. Lasts 1 week, refrigerated.
TRY IT
Add grapeseed oil to the sauce in the proportion of 2 oil to 1 sauce. You'll have a great vinaigrette that's perfect for seafood and celery-root salads. Use the sauce for "ceviche cooking" cod, salmon, and shrimp. Marinate chicken legs and thighs in the sauce, then fry.
MING'S TIP
It's perfectly all right to use bottled lime juice for this, as long as it's real juice. (Check juice labels.) Fresh or bottled, lime juice sometimes has a bitter-tasting "edge." Taste the juice you're going to use, and if necessary, add up to a tablespoon of sugar to balance it.
>>This recipe appears in
Episode #105.
>> For additional recipes and more, visit
www.ming.com
