For this salad we have gone for a slightly Vietnamese-inspired dressing while using fresh, in season and available slaw ingredients to match.
The combination of the dressing, slaw and the prawns makes this salad fresh, healthy and super delicious.
This salad also stores well for a couple of days, so if you make too much it makes great leftovers, with the dressing only getting better with time.
Serves 4
For the dressing
3 cloves minced garlic
1 knob of ginger
1 red chilli (de-seeded)
1 small bunch of coriander
1 small bunch of mint
½ cup rice wine vinegar
¼ cup sugar
1 Tbsp lemon or lime juice
1 tsp fish sauce
1 Tbsp soy sauce or tamari
½ cup sesame oil
For the slaw
200g vermicelli
½ green cabbage
½ red cabbage
1 carrot
1 fennel bulb and stem
1 capsicum
For the prawns
200g fresh raw, peeled prawn cutlets
1 tsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp sesame oil
Pinch of salt and white pepper
Method
For this recipe you’ll need a small bowl, two larger bowls, a small saucepan and a non-stick frypan.
Start by soaking your rice noodles in a bowl covered in hot to boiling water, adding a little salt and sesame oil to add some flavour to the noodles, as well as the oil helping to stop the noodles from sticking together.
In the smaller bowl add your prawns, garlic, sesame oil and seasoning and set aside for later.
For the dressing, mince the garlic and ginger, de-seed and finely chop your chilli.
Roughly chop the fresh coriander and mint and set aside for later.
In the small saucepan, add the rice wine vinegar, sugar, garlic, ginger and chilli. Heat on a medium simmer for another 5 minutes, until it starts to thicken a little, then remove from the heat and add your other liquids - lemon juice, soy sauce (or tamari), fish sauce and sesame oil.
This should cool the dressing down enough to add your chopped herbs now as well. If it’s still a little hot, set it aside and wait for it to cool before adding. This will stop them from going brown.
For the slaw, finely chop the fresh vegetables - you can do it by hand, use a handheld mandolin or use the shredder attachment on your food processor.
Any of these options will work perfectly fine as long as you are getting all the vegetables nice and finely shredded for an easy to eat salad.
For the fennel bulb, cut the fennel in half and remove the core before shredding, you can also use the tops by finely chopping those down as well.
Add this all to the large bowl. Drain and add your rice noodles.
Pre-heat a non-stick pan with sesame oil for the prawns. Once the pan is nice and hot add your prawns so they’re all fitting nice and flat on their sides. Cooking for around 2-3 minutes per side, aiming to get a nice brown colouring on both sides.
While they’re cooking you can mix your noodles, slaw and dressing together in a large bowl and serve ready for the prawns to be added to the top once cooked.
