Thai Arancini: Nãem Khâo Thâwt at home

Nãem khâo thâwt/yam naaem khaao thaawt ('pressed ham and fried rice salad) is one of my favorite dishes at Spoon. Erik M had a great post describing how the dish is made. The dishes has garnered lots of praise on LTH; there are some great photos in this thread. I've been wanting to try it at home since I saw this great recipe/pictorial on Thaifoodmaster.com. So we decided to make it last night.

Erik M wrote that Spoon gets their Naem (pressed ham/fermented pork sausage) from the chef at Sticky Rice or from a Lao woman who sells to local grocery stores. I asked at Golden Pacific and they recommended using frozen Vietnamese Nem Nuong (a pork mixture used for meatballs). While Erik M cautioned that the homemade stuff is far superior (and I'm sure he's right), I thought the Nem Nuong tasted terrific.

Here are the steps in the recipe:

Curry paste:
I often add a guajillo chile to the thai chiles in my curry paste. They add color and flavor without too much heat. Apparently, in Thailand, a larger, milder chile is often used for the same purpose.



Other curry paste ingredients (lime zest, roasted shrimp paste, galanga, lemongrass, garlic and shallots)



Curry paste in progress:


Cooked rice is mixed with curry paste, kaffir lime leaves, coconut, salt, sugar and eggs (actually, the curry paste is supposed to get mixed in first, oops!)




Then, the mixture is rolled into balls, dunked in tempura batter and deep-fried.
The instructions say the recipe makes 12 ping-pong sized balls. Mine were more like racquetballs and I got 24 of them.
You fry some peanuts and chiles (for garnish) as well.



Honestly, I could have just stopped here. I devoured a couple hot from the fryer and they were delicious (as is nearly anything dipped in tempura batter and fried). I should have made some Thai chile dipping sauce...



But we kept going and finished the salad:

Cooked nem nuong:


Other salad ingredients: julienned ginger, chopped shallots, cilantro, culantro ('saw coriander'), mint, scallions, crushed chiles, lime, fish sauce (not pictured), homemade nam prik pao (Thai chile jam--my addition)



Finished salad:


I loved this dish. Next time, I'll make the balls a little smaller for increased surface area/more crunch. This dish was a little labor intensive but a fun way to spend a cloudy/rainy afternoon.
And it least the weather cleared up so we could eat outside...

Served with Trade Winds Tripel made with Thai basil


Edited a couple times for spelling, leaving out ingredients

Wow. I am now incredibly hungry.

thaiobssessed--you made my night (week, month...) This is my favorite thai dish and I love the idea of making it at home. Thanks for the tutorial--I hope to get to take a shot at this in the next week and will be sure to report on results.