What I love about this recipe – besides the balance between sweet, sour, hot, crunchy, and DELICIOUS – is that it’s pretty versatile. First – I basically just threw it together using whatever I had on hand and second, I can think of a 10 more ways to change it up.
For example – hate pork? Try chicken! Or white fish! Or even steak! Steak would go really nicely with this spicy dressing.
Why yes those are pens in the background – they uh… add… color to the picture…
This recipe took me pretty much 20 minutes to throw together. If you’re using a white meat, you can marinate it for about 15 of those minutes while you put everything else together!
The flavors in this salad are intense. I used a pre-tenderized lean pork cutlet – if you’re using chicken breast I suggest you butterfly and cut it up into thin strips.
Ingredients:
- 2 pork cutlets/chicken breasts/sirloin steaks/meat of choice
- 3-4 cloves garlic
- salad mix/lettuce
- half a medium onion
- 3-4T macadamia nut oil
- 3-4 green onion stalks
- 1 tomato or a handful of cherry tomatoes
- 2 stalks celery
- 1 green or red chili – de-seeded
- 1 1/2T coconut nectar – can sub with sugar
- 1T fish sauce or coconut aminos
- juice of 1 small lime
- Fat of choice for frying
- chopped cilantro to top
- handfull of almonds or peanuts
- salt to taste
- Roughly chop garlic (save one clove), chili, green onions and add to a mortar and pestle. Grind into a fine paste. Add salt, lime juice, coconut nectar, fish sauce and mix. Give it a taste! Too salty? Add more coconut nectar! Too sweet? More fish sauce! Make sure YOU like it before you continue.
- Add oil and stir. What I did was use half the dressing and marinate my pork while I prepped the salad – you can skip this step entirely if you like.
- Quarter tomatoes and slice celery thin. Throw in a bowl with salad mix and using your hands, mix in desired amount of dressing.
- After about 15 minutes, fry up the onion half, diced fine, in a pan. Add chopped garlic and continue to fry until brown. Then add pork cutlets and marinade and fry until lightly browned.
- Take the pork out (along with juices!) and wipe down your pan.
- Lightly toast almonds/peanuts and then remove from the pan. When they cool, crush them.
- Top salad with pork, and garnish with nuts and cilantro! Drool a little. 😛