Recipe – Chicken Bo La Lot

This recipe wowed visitors to the cooking stage at Perth Garden and Landscape Festival in May. Prepared by chef Caroline Taylor, it features sweet potato leaves stuffed with ginger chilli chicken and served with nuoc cham dipping sauce. Grow your own sweet potato leaves in the garden or follow Deryn Thorpe’s tip and place a sweet potato in water on a sunny windowsill.

Ingredients

• 20 sweet potato leaves or betel leaves
• 200g chicken mince
• 3 tsp water chestnut (drained and finely diced)
• 2 tsp native lemongrass (or normal lemongrass)
• 3 tsp grated redback ginger (or normal ginger)
• 1 tsp red chilli (deseeded and finely diced)
• 1 tsp oyster sauce
• 1 small shallot (finely diced)
• salt to taste
• 1 tsp pepper
• 2 tsp Asian chicken stock powder − bamboo skewers
• 3 tsp butter (melted)
• toasted sesame seeds for garnish

Nuoc cham (for dipping sauce)

2 tbsp water, 2 tbsp fish sauce, 2 tbsp lime juice, 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar, 1 tbsp grated palm sugar, 1 fresh chilli finely sliced, 1 tsp lemongrass finely diced and 1⁄2 garlic clove diced. Mix all ingredients together and serve.

Method

1. Rinse sweet potato/betel leaves to clean then soak leaves in bowl of cold water.
2. Combine chicken mince, water chestnut, lemongrass, ginger, chilli, oyster sauce, shallot, salt, pepper and stock powder in a bowl and incorporate all ingredients well together. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
3. Remove leaves from water. Trim from stem and lay out flat, presentation side down.
4. Place about a teaspoon of chicken mixture in a line at the fat base of the leaves and fold the two sides inwards before rolling the mixture up into somewhat of a spring roll.
5. Continue this with remaining leaves and mixture until all are completed.
6. Using two skewers, spike three bo la lots all the way through leaving a small space in between each one.
7. Brush liberally with melted butter and then cook on a medium heat griddle or barbecue (failing this, a heavy based fry pan) until well caramelised and brown on both sides.
8. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and serve immediately with a dipping bowl of nuoc cham sauce.