1 small English cucumber, sliced
1/4 cup lime juice
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup red onion, chopped
3 tablespoons roasted peanuts

1. Combine lime juice, fish sauce, sugar and garlic and adjust quantities to taste.
2. Dress cucumber with the prepared dressing and top with peanuts and red onion.

Makes 4 small servings

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 scallions, chopped
2 tablespoons peanut oil
4 green bird peppers, chopped
1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped
2 tablespoons fish sauce

8 ounces rice noodles
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 tablespoon butter
2 shallots, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 scallion, chopped
salted water

1. Slightly freeze chicken breasts to make them easier to slice, then slice them into thin pieces.
2. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook the rice noodles while preparing the chicken.
3. Heat peanut oil in a skillet or wok over medium-high heat an fry the garlic and scallions until fragrant, about 1 minute.
4. Add the bird peppers and chicken and fry until cooked through, about 4-5 minutes.
5. Remove from heat and stir in the fish sauce and basil.
6. Meanwhile, melt butter with peanut oil in a separate skillet and add the shallots, garlic and scallion.
7. Coat rice noodles with the shallot, garlic and scallion and top with chicken to serve.

Makes 4 servings

1 pound asparagus
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 Serrano pepper, minced
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon water
2 tablespoons roasted peanuts
salted water

1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and lightly steam asparagus until bright green and slightly tender.
2. Heat oil in a large skillet or wok and add the garlic and chili, then coat the asparagus in the oil.
3. Add the fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar and water and continue frying until the asparagus is tender. Garnish with peanuts to serve.

Makes 4 servings

I know it's not true, but I feel like I've exhausted all Thai possibilities at this point. What I really mean is that I don't think I can stomach any more lime juice and fish sauce concoctions until next year. I made one more go at it, at least for this month, with Thai Basil Chicken. This was another one of those dishes that my brain kept telling me I didn't like, but that I continued to shovel into my mouth and then eat the leftovers of. It has all the elements of hearty comfort food (like chicken noodle soup!) except it doesn't agree with my palette. Alone the chicken wouldn't win any awards, but paired with the noodles and a bit of soy sauce and it was actually remarkably edible, even if I am only saying that in hindsight. The hot and sour thing is growing on me.

I'm sort of under the impression that I should have a Thai Cucumber Salad with any spicy Thai dish, so I went about it a different way this time with a Cucumber Peanut Salad. It consists of almost entirely different ingredients than the previous Thai cucumber salad while still passing as almost a replica. Red onions are like shallots, lime juice is like vinegar, and so on and so forth. I just ate it alongside the chicken whenever I felt my mouth was burning. It didn't really help with that, but it did cleanse my palette a bit.

I had some leftover asparagus stalks from (frighteningly, over a week ago) the Mushroom Moose Steaks (with asparagus) dinner. I made Thai Asparagus Spears which were, as expected, quite woody, having over a week to toughen up in the fridge. Likely due more to the recipe than the aged asparagus, the flavor sort of struck me as an anonymous Asian green, rather than asparagus itself. Sort of like what any given vegetable in chop suey tasted like before I'd ever eaten a bean sprout outside of a restaurant. It was good, but I think I'd feel like I was wasting good asparagus if I prepared it this way again.