Last week I rustled up a glass noodle salad with ripe mangoes and prawns, and it was a real flavour bomb, with sweet, salty, sour and heat all fighting for its space with equal gusto ♥️ For me, this was the perfect light and bright summer bowl. Though I don’t love ripe mangoes, I do love cooking with them for their ability to fit in perfectly with a range of contrasting flavours.

This salad was super easy to make, with no cooking except for the prawns, and took me just around 15 minutes in total. This has the fresh, clean flavours of South East Asia and the level of heat can be tweaked to suit individual palates. So here goes the recipe 😁

• Preparation: 5 minutes
• Cooking: 5 minutes
• Assembling: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

1. Glass Noodles – 150 gms around (before hydration)
2. Mango – 2 big, ripe, skinned and diced
3. Prawns (medium) – 200 gms, de-shelled and de-veined
4. Fresh Coriander – 3-4 tbsp, chopped roughly, with the stalks
5. Chillies – 6, chopped finely
6. Sesame Oil – 2 tbsp
7. Honey – 1 tbsp
8. Fish Sauce – 2-3 tbsp
9. Light Soy – 1 tbsp
10. Lemon Juice – 3-4 tbsp
11. Salt, as per taste
12. Black Pepper – 1 tsp, ground
13. White oil: 1 tsp, to cook the prawns. Any flavourless oil will do.

Steps:

1. Soak the noodles in hot water in a bowl, making sure they are submerged, for 4-5 minutes.
2. While the noodles are soaking, toss the prawns in a splash of white oil with salt and pepper, cooking them for about 4 minutes and making sure they are opaque. If you are using frozen prawns, thaw them beforehand to ensure even cooking.
3. Drain the water from the hydrated, softened noodles.
4. Add everything in a big bowl and combine. Be careful not to be too rough as the glass noodles are really tender things, needing all the love and care 🙂. Just a few gentle strokes will be enough for the noodles to soak in the flavours.
5. Taa-daa, it’s done! Take a few pictures if you fancy, and eat soon!

A few things to keep in mind:

– Like most salads, this too tastes best when had immediately after mixing.

– Any kind of ripe mango is fine, just make sure they aren’t too mushy.

– Bird’s-eye Chillies work best.

– If six chillies in one bowl of salad is too much for you, then you can de-seed them to lessen the heat, keeping the flavour intact.

– Sesame Oil cannot really be substituted with any other oil for this recipe

– If you aren’t a fan of the pungent smell of fish sauce, you can calibrate it to your liking. But it really adds the punch to this.

Let me know if you try this out and like it 😊.