Green Pawpaw (Papaya) Salad With Seafood
- Ready In:
- 51mins
- Ingredients:
- 16
- Serves:
-
4-6
ingredients
- 250 g green prawns, peeled and deveined
- 250 g squid, tubes split, and scraped inside
- 1 small green pawpaw, peeled, deseeded and grated (you need 1 cup of grated pawpaw, I grate mine in the food processor)
- 6 shallots, finely sliced (use golden or red shallots)
- 1 tablespoon lemongrass, crushed and white part finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon kaffir lime leaf, fresh, centre veins removed, rolled, then very finely sliced
- 1⁄4 cup coriander leaves, roughly chopped (cilantro)
- 1⁄4 cup mint, leaves only, stems removed and roughly chopped
- 1⁄4 cup salad dressing (see recipe for Hot and Sour Dressing below)
- 2 tablespoons peanuts, roasted in a dry pan then crushed
- 2 tablespoons crispy shallots (buy these in a jar from an Asian food store)
-
Hot and Sour Dressing
- 3 small red chilies, deseeded (use 4 if you want it hotter)
- 8 garlic cloves, chopped finely
- 8 tablespoons lime juice, fresh
- 4 teaspoons palm sugar (or to taste)
- 3 -4 tablespoons fish sauce (to taste, you want a balance of hot, sour, sweet and salty so adjust ingredients as required)
directions
- First prepare all the ingredients as described above - keep any ends and trimmings of garlic, shallots, coriander root, lemon grass, mint and coriander stalks, and odd bits of lemon grass and a couple of spare kaffir lime leaves aside to flavour the water you're going to cook the seafood in.
- Next, make the dressing as it has to sit for at least 15 minutes for the flavours to merge.
- To make dressing, mix together all ingredients and taste to ensure there is a good balance of hot, sour, sweet and salty - adjust ingredients as necessary.
- Now prepare to cook the seafood.
- Using a very sharp knife, score the inside of the squid tubes diagonally, then score in the opposite direction (to form a diamond pattern).
- Cut the squid into rough triangle shapes - about 4 per tube.
- Prepare a medium bowl of ice cold water, with ice cubes in it, and sit it by the stove.
- Fill a large pot with water and add ends and trimmings as described above and a couple of tablespoons of salt.
- Bring water to a rolling boil then add the seafood in small batches, cooking prawns for about a minute, and squid for about 30 seconds. (The seafood can be a bit hard to find in the water, so just add a little at a time, and you'll have to 'fish' for it.)
- Remove seafood and immediately plunge into iced water. This cooking technique will make the squid so tender you won't believe it!
- When seafood is completely cold, prepare salad.
- In a large bowl toss together pawpaw, shallots, coriander, mint leaves, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, seafood and 1/4 cup of the hot and sour dressing (serve any remaining dressing on the side).
- To present salad, transfer to a plate, bring most of the seafood to the top and arrange decoratively, then sprinkle with crushed peanuts and crispy shallots.
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RECIPE SUBMITTED BY
<p>Above: Slideshow of our garden at Avalon Slideshow of our recent holiday at Woodgate Beach, South-East Queensland, Australia. Hi! I'm Kookaburra, from Australia. First, a promise. I will only post recipes on this site which I've made myself and to which I would personally give a 5 star rating - what you give them is up to you ;-) I look forward to receiving your feedback. If you look at my reviews, they're all 5 stars. That doesn't mean I give 5 stars to every recipe I try. I'm just not interested in giving poor ratings to anyone else's recipe because I accept that different people have different tastes. So, I've decided that I'll only review those recipes which I really love and which I'd make again and recommend to friends. If a recipe meets that criteria - even if it needs a bit of 'tweaking' to match my tastes, I'll give it 5 stars. If not, I'll just delete it from my recipe book and no hard feelings. I'm not advocating this as the 'right' approach. I just decided I needed a consistent strategy for rating and this is mine. I'm passionate about cooking - and eating! What I look for in food is something that 'zings' in the mouth. I like lots of taste - I'm not a big fan of subtlety. I don't often cook recipes exactly as written. I like to experiment and adapt things to my own taste. A retired marketing executive and academic, I live with my elderly (but thoroughly modern) mother in a tiny mountain village at the edge of the rainforest. I'm female, happily single, in my mid-40s and boast the Rubenesque figure of a passionate cook! Avalon, our 'story-book' cottage, overlooks a small lake. As I sit at my computer or work in the kitchen, I'm serenaded by a cacophany of native birds - including a very fat family of kookaburras! We have quite a large property and are lucky to have vegetable gardens and a variety of fruit and nut trees. I look forward to sharing recipes on Recipezaar with family, friends and friends I've yet to meet. last minute flight</p>