Khao Yam Pak Tai

Ingredients

• 400 g cooked jasmine rice, cooled (tint it blue with butterfly pea flowers if you like)
• 150 ml budu sauce (southern Thai fermented fish sauce), or anchovy-rich fish sauce
• 150 ml water
• 80 g palm sugar
• 2 stalks lemongrass, bruised, for the sauce
• 20 g galangal, sliced
• 4 shallots, halved
• 5 kaffir lime leaves, whole
• 80 g grated fresh coconut
• 40 g dried shrimp
• 1 stalk lemongrass, sliced into paper-thin rings
• 100 g yardlong beans, finely sliced
• 100 g bean sprouts
• 150 g pomelo segments, broken up, or shredded green mango
• 1 torch ginger flower, very finely sliced, optional
• 6 kaffir lime leaves, shredded hair-fine
• 2 limes, cut into wedges
• Bird's eye chillies, sliced

Before you cook

• Cook the jasmine rice ahead of time and spread it on a tray to cool completely.
• Bruise the two lemongrass stalks for the sauce with the back of a knife.
• Slice the remaining lemongrass stalk into rings as thin as paper.
• Shred six kaffir lime leaves into fine threads.
• Slice the yardlong beans across into thin discs.
• Break the pomelo into loose sacs with your fingers.

Steps

1. Put the budu, water, palm sugar, bruised lemongrass, galangal, halved shallots and whole kaffir lime leaves into a small pan.
2. Bring it to a boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 20 minutes, until it has reduced by about a third and gone dark and glossy.
3. Strain the sauce into a bowl, pressing the aromatics hard to get everything out, and leave it to cool.
4. Toast the grated coconut in a dry pan over medium-low heat for 8 minutes, stirring constantly, until it is the colour of milky tea.
5. Tip the coconut onto a cold plate at once so it stops cooking.
6. Toast the dried shrimp in the same pan for 2 minutes, then pound them in a mortar to a fluffy floss.
7. Mound the cooled rice in the centre of a wide serving plate.
8. Arrange the toasted coconut, shrimp floss, sliced lemongrass, yardlong beans, bean sprouts, pomelo, torch ginger and shredded lime leaf in separate piles around the rice.
9. Set out the cooled budu sauce, the lime wedges and the sliced chillies alongside.
10. Pour two or three tablespoons of the budu sauce over the plate and toss everything together with two spoons just before eating.
11. Squeeze over lime and eat immediately, before the herbs lose their crispness.