I walked home from the markets today thinking about making something new for an early dinner. As I passed a lovely array of shops, I suddenly craved some calamari. So I bought a tube and walked home dreaming up a noodle salad that borrows the sauce base from Thai green papaya salad and combined that with sweet potato noodles and a salad mixed with fresh herbs. It became a delicious, filling salad bursting with flavour.
Thai-Inspired Noodle Salad With Calamari
Ingredients
60 grams sweet potato noodles (per serving)
1 tube of calamari, washed and cut in to rings
For salad
1/2 cucumber, trimmed and julienned
1/4 yellow pepper, seeds and stems removed and julienned
1/2 carrot, trimmed and julienned
2 radishes, julienned
1/4 red onion, peeled and julienned
3-4 pinches of Himalayan pink salt
handful of fresh cilantro, finely chopped
small handful of fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
1 scallion, trimmed and finely chopped (for topping)
For dressing
3 red chillies, trimmed and roughly chopped (for mild heat reduce to 1 and for intense spice increase to 5)
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 tbs dried shrimp
1 fresh dates, pitted and caps removed
small handful of activated cashews
juice from 1 lime
1 tbs Redboat or Son fish sauce
juice from the salted salad
Method
Julienne the cucumber, yellow pepper, carrot, radishes and red onion. Add several pinches of salt and thoroughly mix together. Transfer the vegetables to a sieve and place over a bowl to catch the juices.
Peel the garlic, trim and chop the chilli and add to a mort and pestle along with the dried shrimp and dates. Pound until the dried shrimp has broken up and a paste forms. Add in the cashews and continue to pound until they are fully absorbed in to the paste. Juice a lime and add the juice with the fish sauce. Mix the paste and juices together with a spoon and put to the side.
Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the sweet potato noodles. Cook for six minutes or as directed on the package instructions. While the noodles are cooking, wash the calamari, cut in to rings and dry on a paper towel. Heat a skillet and add a small amount of olive oil. Cook the rings for 1 minute on each side until they are just cooked and very tender. Remove from the heat and cut in to bite sized pieces on a plate.
Finely chop the cilantro and mint leaves. On a separate board finely chop a scallion for a topping.
When the noodles are done, drain and add to a serving bowl. Mix the salad and chopped herbs with the noodles and add the drained juices to the dressing. Combine the dressing with the noodle salad and toss until the dressing is evenly distributed. Add in the chopped, cooked calamari pieces and top with thinly sliced scallions.