Rice Salad

I'm known for my Mediterranean cooking and it's what I know best, the flavors are in my bones and my cooking is unthinking and instinctual with  Mediterranean ingredients.  My guilty secret is my equal love of Asian flavors particularly South East Asia.  It doesn't really make any sense because for the two years I lived in Hong Kong as a child I turned my nose up at Chinese food.  It's not something I know in my bones at all.  Still I like to cook with asian flavors at home whenever I can get away with it.  I make sure to always have ginger and fish sauce on hand.  Toasted sesame oil is good.  Then many of the North African ingredients we always have work as well, cilantro, lime, hot chilies.  Todays lunch was inspired by a salad I read about in The Seductions of Rice a wonderful book of recipes involving rice supposedly from around the world but the passion is all in Asia.  The book describes a South East Asian salad of vegetables, fresh herbs, cold rice and lime juice.  I took some leftover fish and added it to the rice, sliced cucumbers and radishes.  Used whole leaves of mint, cilantro and basil as my salad greens.  I made what I consider a basic Vietnamese dressing of pounded ginger, garlic and chili.  A little sugar, lime and fish sauce.  I let it macerate and the sugar dissolve then poured it over the salad, added some toasted sesame oil and there it was a perfect hot weather dish.