Cooked long grain rice. Sometimes, the rice is infused with different herbs and spices or tinted with juices of different leaves and flowers that are believed to have medicinal properties.
Dried shrimp that has been pounded into flakes
Toasted coconut flakes.
A sour fruit: green mango and pomelo sections are quite common. Sometimes, a squeeze of lime is added to the salad to reinforce the tartness of the sour fruit.
Fresh mung bean sprouts
Thinly sliced fresh lemongrass
Fresh kaffir lime leaves, cut into chiffonade
My mother was a big fan of Khao Yam even though she wasn’t a southerner. She made it often when we got together with other family members and we all loved it. Mom’s version always contained sliced fresh wing beans, the slightly tangy and breathtakingly beautiful stamens of chompu/jambu flowers, and the seeds inside young white popimac pods. But that was mainly because we had those plants in the backyard.