02 Jan Barbecued Asian Prawns With Noodle Salad Recipe

Get ready to throw another prawn on the bbq with this yummy seafood salad.

This has a lot of ingredients for a ‘simple’ salad, but the prawns were delicious and the marinade was very nice. I thought it would be very spicy with four chillies in it, but it wasn’t. The fried shallots gave a great crunch and added texture to the dish.

Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 5 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients

12 large king prawns, peeled, deveined and tails intact
Vegetable oil
¼ cup fried shallots (these can be purchased at your local Asian supermarket or you can fry your own)
1 long red chilli, halved, seeds removed and thinly sliced

Marinade

2 garlic cloves, crushed
2cm fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
1 bird’s eye chilli, chopped
1 long red chilli, chopped
½ cup coriander, a mix of roots, stems and leaves, roughly chopped
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs rice wine
1 tbs sesame oil
1 tbs honey

Dressing

1 bird’s eye chilli, chopped
2cm fresh ginger, peeled and finely diced
2 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs rice vinegar
2 tbs grated palm sugar
Juice of ½ lime

Salad

150g vermicelli rice noodles
Vegetable oil, for drizzling
1 cup coriander leaves
1 cup Thai basil leaves, torn
½ cup mint leaves, torn

Method

To make the marinade, use a mortar and pestle (or stick blender) to pound the garlic, ginger, chillies and coriander until you have a rough paste. Add soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil and combine – you want to mash all the flavours out of the ingredients. Stir in honey.

Add the prawns and toss to coat well. Set aside to marinate for 15 minutes.

For the salad dressing, combine all the ingredients in a jar, seal and shake well to combine. Season to taste and set aside.

Place vermicelli noodles in a heatproof bowl, pour over boiling water to cover and stand for two minutes. Drizzle vegetable oil on noodles to separate them.

Heat barbecue to high. Thread three prawns onto each of four metal skewers and cook for one to two minutes on each side until just cooked.

In a large bowl, combine coriander, Thai basil and mint leaves with noodles and pour over enough dressing to coat the salad lightly – you may not need it all.  Top with prawns, shallots and red chilli. Alternatively, you can plate as individual serves.

This is an edited extract from Dish It Up (link removed) by Hayden Quinn published by Murdoch Books, RRP $35.