Really love this salad, the smoked sweet mackerel really works well in the salad. A little fish really does go a long way so don’t overload with fish. The rest is a simple combination of lovely flavours and textures. By dusting the fish in cornflour, it stops the oil spitting and spluttering, plus helps to give slightly crispier edge. Arrowroot works equally well as does Tapioca flour.
Ingredients
- 150g glass rice noodles
- 2 medium carrots, cut in very fine strips
- 4 runner or 200g green beans, long sliced as fine as possible
- 4 banana shallots, peeled and sliced very thinly
- 1 green under ripe mango, in very thin strips
- Dressing
- 3 smoked mackerel fillet
- 2-3 tbsp cornflour
- ½ small red chilli, very finely chopped
- 1 tbsp Nam Pla (fish sauce)
- 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped and cooked in a little oil until golden (this really changes the flavour of the garlic)
- 2 tbsp palm sugar or soft brown sugar, crushed
- finely grated zest and juice 3 large limes
- 2 tbsp any oil
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 75g dry roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
- 3 tbsp fresh coriander, roughly chopped
- 4 tbsp fresh Thai basil, roughly chopped
Method
- Place the glass noodles into a bowl and pour over enough boiling water to cover them. Leave for 10 minutes to soften, then drain well and pat dry with kitchen towel, and cut into roughly 3cm pieces.
- Next place the carrots, beans and shallots into a separate bowl and mix well.
- Add the chilli, nam pla, garlic, palm sugar, lime juice (all 3) and zest from 2 limes, mix well ans season with salt and pepper.
- Pull the fish into smallish flakes, remove any bones and skin.
- Heat a shallow frying pan with vegetable oil.
- Dust the fish flakes in a little cornflour
- Add small amounts of the mackerel, and cook until very crispy, about 2-3 minutes, then drain well.
- When ready to serve, add the noodles to the marinated vegetable mix then add the peanuts, coriander and basil and really mix well.
- Finally add the cooked crispy fish, serve straight away.