Prawn and papaya salad

Tamara West

Inspired by the kilos(!) of fresh prawns and flavoursome papaya I ate throughout the whole Sunshine Coast and the Thai flavours that were also widely used, comes this quick, sunny, cheery creation that makes a good starter, or mix it with some salad greens for lunch.

Ingredients

1	Olive oil
24	Prawns, shelled (I leave the tail on) (Main)
1	Papaya, skinned, deseeded and cut into strips (Main)
1 handful	Mint leaves, shredded

Chilli caramel sauce

200 g	Palm sugar, shaved
100 ml	Water
2	Chillies, small, hot (or use 1 for less heat), deseeded and finely sliced
2 Tbsp	Fish sauce
3 Tbsp	Lime juice

Directions

1. Coat the prawns with a little oil and roast in a roasting dish in a hot oven for 3-4 minutes.
2. Place some papaya on each plate, top with prawns, some mint and a good drizzle of caramel chilli sauce (see below).

Chilli caramel sauce

1. Simmer the palm sugar and water in a saucepan for about 5-8 minutes until it begins to turn into a light brown caramel. Then watch it closely and take it off the heat just before it becomes dark brown (scrape the sides of the saucepan occasionally to stop crystals from forming).
2. Stir through the chillies and leave to cool a bit before adding the fish sauce and lime juice — adjust the flavours, adding more to suit.

Jo recommends

This chilli sauce is one I adapted from Teage Ezard’s book Lotus Asian Flavours. I make it up and use it to drizzle over all sorts of things. For speed you could use a good-quality store-bought sweet chilli sauce – Culley’s Thai sweet chilli sauce is my fave.