How to make tum mark dang - Lao spicy cucumber salad recipe
 
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A pungent, fiery, mouth-watering traditional Lao cucumber salad that wakes up the tastebuds. Enjoy with sticky rice, rice vermicelli noodles, grilled/bbq meats, pork crackling, or your favourite accompaniments.
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Recipe type: Salad
Cuisine: Lao
Serves: 2
Ingredients
  • 4 Lebanese cucumbers
  • 10 Thai/bird's eye chilies (or as many as you like)
  • 8 cherry (or grape tomatoes)
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • 1 lemon or lime
  • 1 Tbsp of fish sauce
  • 1 tsp of shrimp paste
  • 1 tsp of salt
  • 1 tsp of sugar
Instructions
  1. Prep all of your ingredients before you start. Wash the cucumbers, chilies, cherry tomatoes, and lemon. Remove the stems from chilies, slice the cherry tomatoes into halves, cut the lemon into wedges, peal and cut the root tip off the garlic cloves.
  2. Chop and slice the cucumbers into long thin julienne slivers. Do this by holding the cucumber in one hand, and with your other hand holding sharp knife or cleaver, carefully and quickly repetitiously chop the surface of the cucumber with vertical lines of about half a centimeter deep all around the cucumber. Then, carefully slice long slivers (of about half a centimeter deep) off the chopped surface of the cucumber. View photos for details. Please concentrate and be careful when doing this, especially if its your first time. It can be tricky and dangerous, but easy with some experience. Repeat for the other cucumbers. When all cucumbers are prepared, put them aside. Reserve the ‘seed logs’.
  3. Place the chilies, garlic cloves, salt, and sugar in the mortar and pound with the pestle to a rough consistency. Be careful to not splatter any into your eyes.
  4. Add the shrimp paste and gently mix/rub it in with the other ingredients with the tip of the pestle. Be careful to not splatter any of the liquid into your eyes when doing this!
  5. Add the slivers/strands of cucumber and gently pound and stir through with the pestle and a spoon, mixing all of the ingredients together.
  6. Add the cherry tomatoes, and continue to gently pound and stir through.
  7. Add the fish sauce, and squeeze in the lemon juice. Gently mix and stir the ingredients together with the pestle and a spoon. Taste the salad and sauce. What you're aiming for is a punchy, pungent, fiery blend of spicy, salty, savoury, sour, and a little sweet flavours.
  8. Transfer the salad and sauce neatly into a serving bowl or plate and serve with sticky rice, jasmine rice, rice vermicelli noodles, grilled/bbq meats, pork crackling, etc. Enjoy your meal! :)
Recipe by Padaek at http://padaek.com/make-tum-mark-dang-lao-spicy-cucumber-salad-recipe/