Thai lamb salad with spicy dressing

I LOVE this dish. Frying the cold lamb until crisp on the edges gives it a great texture, then adding the brilliant dressing means you get masses of flavours in. You really need all the dressing ingredients, sadly; it won’t work with normal sugar or without the fish sauce. It doesn’t need poncing around with, just whack it on the plate and put it on the table. Simple. This is one of the dishes I do all the time at home. SERVES 4 ● 2 red chillies, 1 chopped, 1 finely sliced

● 4 garlic cloves, crushed

● 90g root ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

● 2 tbsp palm sugar

● 6 tbsp soy sauce

● 4 tbsp fish sauce

● 300g cooked lamb, cut into thick slices, with the fat left on

● ½ cucumber, halved lengthways, sliced thinly on the diagonal

● 100g fresh podded peas, some in the pods if really fresh

● 100g sugar snap peas, sliced lengthways

● 75g beansprouts

● 6 spring onions, sliced on the diagonal

● 3 tbsp roughly chopped mint leaves

● Small handful of coriander sprigs

● Juice of 2 limes

● 25g pea shoots (optional) Place the chopped chilli, the garlic, ginger and palm sugar into a food processor or mortar and pestle and blitz or grind to a fine paste.

add the soy and fish sauce then blitz once more.

Taste and adjust if necessary. Heat a frying pan until hot, add the fatty lamb and fry for two or three minutes until crispy on one side.

add half the dressing and heat through until sticky and coating the lamb nicely, then remove from the heat and set aside.

Place the cucumber, peas, sugar snaps, beansprouts, spring onions, mint and coriander into a bowl and toss to combine.

add some dressing and lime juice to the bowl then add the pea shoots (if using) and toss once more.

Divide the salad between the plates then top with the lamb. Finish with more of the dressing, finely sliced chilli and serve.