Gary's Cookbook

Ingredients

• 3 lbs boneless chicken breasts
• 3 green onions
• 4 fresh lemons
• 3-4 inch piece of ginger root
• 1 medium cucumber
• 1 1/2 cups roasted, unsalted peanuts
• 1 1/2 cups of shredded coconut
• 1 hot Thai pepper (optional)
• 2 dozen big leaves of spinach
• 1/2 tsp. lime juice
• plum sauce
• fish sauce
• five or six small bowls

Instructions

Wash the spinach leaves carefully (you don't want to tear them) and set them aside to drain.
Cut the chicken into chunks no larger than 1 inch.
Sautée the chicken until it's thoroughly cooked (use very little or no oil). Drain and set aside.
Slice the onions thinly and place into a bowl large enough for the chicken.
Juice the lemons and put the juice (pulp too) in with the onions.
Add about 4 or 5 tsp. of fish sauce to the onions/lemon juice.
When the chicken is cooled, add it to the onion/lemon/fish sauce bowl. Mix thoroughly, cover and set aside.

Peel the ginger and dice it into small pieces. Place in a small bowl.
Peel the cucumber, remove the seeds, cut into small pieces. Place in a small bowl.
Toast the coconut until it is a light brown. Place in a small bowl.

In a small bowl, add 1/2 cup of plum sauce, 1 tsp of fish sauce, and the lime juice. Mix thoroughly. If the sauce is too thick (it should be runny but thicker than water), you can use water to dilute it.
Remove the chicken, drain it, then chop it up into coarse bits. Place it in a bowl.

The Setup

Simply lay out the bowls of chicken, ginger, coconut, peanut, and cucumber in a buffet or family style. Put the spinach leaves at one end and the sauce at the other end.

Start with a spinach leaf as your taco shell and add a little bit of each ingredient starting with the chicken and ending with the sauce.

Alternatives

Replace the chicken, lemon, onions, and fish sauce with bits of shrimp and you've got mieng kum.

Eliminate everything but the chicken, lemon, onions, and fish sauce and you have an entirely different meal. If you go this way, don't chop up the chicken. Leave it in chunks. Also, pan roast some white rice until it's lightly browned, then grind the rice into a powder. Stir the rice powder thoroughly into the chicken. About 1-2 tsp will do.

The ladies who taught me this were fond of making it with chicken liver but I found that to be somewhat repugnant. If you like liver, though . . .

Meals

Not a dish to serve with red wine. Also, if you can't get big spinach leaves, go for the chicken alternative.