Chicken & Prawn Salad with Caramel Chilli & Lime

This is one of those easy salads that has plenty of Asian flavours - sweet, sour, salty with a bit of heat. Perfect for these hot summer days.

Poach the chicken breasts, or, if you’re short of time, simply buy a rotisserie chicken and shred the meat.

Feel free to add other salad ingredients from your crisper.

Ingredients

The Salad

• 2 poached chicken breast fillets OR rotisserie chicken, meat shredded
• about 16 large cooked prawns, peeled
• 1/2 bunch coriander leaves
• 1/2 bunch mint leaves
• 2 long red chillis, julienned
• 1/2 lebanese cucumber, seeds removed, sliced
• handful roasted peanuts, chopped ( I used roasted thai chilli nuts)
• handful snowpeas, washed, shredded
• 1/2 pkt. rice noodles
• 4 shredded kaffir lime leaves
• lime wedges to serve

Caramel Lime Sauce

• 185g palm sugar, shredded
• 90ml water
• 2 long red chillis, seeds removed, juilenned, leave the seeds in if you like it hot
• 2 tbs shredded fresh ginger
• 2 tbs fish sauce or to taste
• 50ml lime juice or to taste
• zest of 1 lime

Method

To the poach the chicken

1. Pour enough stock or water into a saucepan to cover the breasts. Cover with a lid, and bring to the boil.
2. Slip the breasts in, remove from the heat, and leave covered for 45 minutes. Check to see if they have firmed up which shows they are cooked.
3. Remove the chicken from the water. Allow to cool.
4. When cool enough to handle, coarsely shred the chicken breasts along the grain into long thin strips.

The rice noodles

1. Place the dry noodles in a bowl and pour over a kettle of boiling water. Stand till soft, drain, and cool under running water.

Caramel Lime Sauce

1. In a saucepan, combine the palm sugar and water. Stir to dissolve the sugar, then boil without stirring, until it caramalizes and turns a golden brown.
2. Add the chilli, ginger, lime zest and fish sauce. Cook briefly until the sauce thickens. You can add a little extra water here if needed. Cool completely before adding the lime juice.
3. Make sure to taste it and add more fish sauce or lime juice if needed. It should be sweet, sour and salty, with a little heat.

Assemble the salad

1. Combine the chicken and prawns with a little of the caramel chilli sauce.
2. Add the coriander, mint, and vegetables to the noodles, again, add some caramel chilli sauce toss to combine.
3. Mound both mixes gently onto a serving plate and scatter with roasted peanuts and kaffir lime leaves.
4. Pour over the remaining sauce as the salad is served, with lime wedges on the side.