Chile-Lime Dipping Sauce (nuoc mam chanh)

from Mai Pham, chef/owner of Lemon Grass Restaurant in Sacramento and the author of the just-released "Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table" ( HarperCollins , 2001).

The sauce is puckeringly sour, but addicting, made with equal parts of fish sauce, sugar and lime, studded with lots of chiles. This spicy and lime-y dipping sauce is guaranteed to add zip to steamed and grilled foods and even salads. Make sure to use fresh lime and gently scrape the segments and pulp into the sauce.

Chile-Lime Sauce makes a fabulous dipping sauce for boiled peel-your-own shrimp, steamed clams and mussels. It turns rice and steamed vegetables into a quick meal and is a good dressing for salads such as green mango and grilled beef, banana blossom with chicken or cabbage salad with pork.

1 to 2 garlic cloves
3 Thai bird chiles, chopped
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice with some pulp and segments

Place the garlic, chiles and sugar in a mortar and pound to a paste. (You can also chop by hand.) Transfer to a small mixing bowl and add the fish sauce and lime juice and pulp. Set aside for 15 minutes for the flavors to develop.

This sauce will keep for up to 2 weeks stored in the refrigerator in a tightly closed jar.

Yields about 1/2 cup.

PER TABLESPOON: 25 calories, 1 g protein, 5 g carbohydrate, 0 fat, 4 mg cholesterol, 510 mg sodium, 0 fiber.