Nam Khao (Crispy Rice Salad with Fermented Pork)

Variations

• Naem khluk / yam naem: the Thai names. Of these, naem khluk (แหนมคลุก) is the one without the fried rice ball — naem and herbs tossed together — and that difference is exactly what this dish is. Thai yam naem khao thot (ยำแหนมข้าวทอด) is the same dish as this one.
• Naem tha deua: named for Tha Deua in Laos, which ko.wikipedia lists as an alternative name.
• Cooked naem: if raw fermented pork is a worry, fry it before it goes in. You lose some of the sourness and aroma and it is perfectly safe, and plenty of restaurants serve it this way.
• Without the pork: crumble in coarsely fried tofu instead and use a little more lime. The fermented sourness has to be replaced by lime and fish sauce.
• Ball size: several small balls give more surface and a crisper salad; large ones leave more soft rice. Same mixture, and this is the handle that changes the result.

Tips

• The crushing is the recipe. Arancini are fried so the shell holds the inside in, and that page explains why the rice has to be cold. This is the inverse. A ball is the shape with the least surface for its volume and frying only ever reaches the surface, so eaten whole it is one thin crust around plain rice. Broken, that crust scatters into dozens of pieces and every bit of soft rice inside is opened to the dressing. The step changes area, not time.
• The crisp has a clock on it. The contrast lahpet thoke and halo-halo argue for — one soft thing against one crisp one — is fighting the clock here. Dressed, the rice softens within minutes, so there is no making it ahead (serving temperature).
• Naem is raw pork made safe by acid rather than heat. As Fermentation basics puts it, the safety of a ferment comes not from cleanliness but from the acidity dropping fast. Naem is that principle applied to meat, and the other raw things preserved here go about it differently — hongeo-hoe goes the other way, into alkali, haring is the fish's own enzymes doing the work, and yukhoe and steak tartare are raw but not preserved at all. With home-made naem, wait until it is properly sour or cook it.
• Read it beside laap. Same country, same idea of rice as texture, opposite handling: laap toasts raw grains to a powder so it can drink the liquid up; this fries cooked rice in lumps and breaks them.
• Hold the oil temperature. Too hot and the outside darkens while the inside is still damp; deep frying covers that. The difference here is that the point of frying is not to protect a crust but to manufacture one you intend to break.
• Season last. The fish sauce is salty, the naem is salty, and the naem is sour as well. Put in half the lime juice, taste, and then finish (balancing flavour).