LAV@NUS: Gỏi bưởi tôm - Prawn Pomelo Salad! (:

Introduction

Chào các cô, thầy, và các bạn, có nhớ gỏi bưởi tôm của chúng tôi không?
Chúng tôi đi nhà thầy Minh đẻ làm "Project nấu ăn ngon"vào thứ bảy trước (2/10/2010). Chúng tôi rất vui khi đang nấu đồ ăn Việt Nam :D

Now Let's us have a review on the recipe :)

Ingredients you need...

500g Medium prawns1/4 pound boneless skinless chicken breast
1 medium pomelo

1 carrot
¼ cups of mint leaves
¼ cups of cilantro leaves
1 tablespoons of sugar4 tablespoons of fish sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons of fresh lime juice
1-2 generous teaspoon of Vietnamese chile garlic sauce
1/4 cup of chopped unsalted, roasted peanuts
1/3 cup of crispy caramelized shallot

How to Cook Gỏi bưởi tôm (:

For this dish, it was mainly a lot of preparation work which took up most of the time, whereas the final assembly of all the ingredients was rather quick!

1. For our dish, we bought chicken breast meat and boiled it in water. Once it is cooked, take it out and leave it aside to cool before hand-shreding the meat.

2. We bought medium-sized prawns and boiled them in water. Take them out once they are cooked. (Cô Bích says you can keep the water that you boiled the prawns in to make soup too!) Peel the prawns, cut them in half length-wise, remove the dirt, and rinse.

Freshly steamed (and unpeeled) prawns!
Prepared by Minh Thằng

TIP 1: Keep the shell on when boiling the prawns. Do not peel the prawns before boiling them! (Otherwise, the prawns will curl up too much.)

3. Cut the pomelo open and remove the flesh form the skin. Using your hands, seperate the flesh apart into bite-sized pieces.

Preparing the mint leaves, cilantro leaves, and pomelo!

4. Peel the mint leaves from the stalks and keep aside. The stalks can be thrown away. Do the same with the cilantro as well (also known as 'chinese parsley').

TIP 2: Make sure you use fresh mint leaves, and ONLY fresh mint leaves, not the dry ones. Or else it won't taste nice.

5. Wash a carrot, remove the outer layer with a peeler, then shave the carrot into thin shreds.

Peter's first time shredding carrots (according to him)! (:

6. Cut the limes in half and squeeze the juice into the bowl.

Minh Huy preparing the lime juice needed for the sauce.

TIP 3: cô Bích says that we Singaporean kids need to know how to differentiate limes from calamansi, especially big calamansi =p SO, be careful not to buy the wrong one!

7. The garlic chili sauce was homemade by blending chili padi and small garlic cloves. The proportion is 1 chili padi to 1 small garlic clove. (You can make as much garlic chili sauce as you like. For our serving of salad, we needed only a 2-2 portion, but we made a 6-6 portion just in case!)

8. Now for the sauce, which Master Chef cô Bích says is the most important part of the dish! Add 1 part sugar to 4 parts fish sauce into a bowl and stir until the sugar dissolves completely. After that, add in about 2 teaspoons of lime juice. Lastly, add about 2 teaspoons of garlic chili sauce (which cô Bích says is crucial to the sauce).

Just a note:

It may take quite a while for the sugar to dissolve so be patient! (: Remember to keep tasting the sauce from time to time to adjust the proportions of fish sauce, sugar, lime juice and garlic chili sauce as appropriate. Be careful also not to put too much garlic chili sauce otherwise it'll be too spicy! Ultimately, as much as online recipes give specific proportions of ingredients to make the sauce, you need not necessarily follow them. What I learnt from cô Bích is to trust your tongue! But then again, I guess it takes a lot of experience too (:

9. We seperated the prawns into 2 - those that looked less presentable, and those that did. Mix the less presentable prawns, the hand-shredded chicken, the pomelo, and the carrot, and toss. We then arranged the presentable prawns on the top, and added the garnishing for a finishing touch - the tomato-skin rose, and the mint and cilantro leaves.

Before garnishing...

And after!! Rất đẹp, phải không? (:

10. Finally, to serve, drizzle the sauce over the salad, sprinkle a generous serving of finely-chopped, unsalted, roasted peanuts, and crispy caramelized shallots before giving a thorough final toss and mix.