Bli's Indulgence: Spicy Yum Woon Sen Koong (Prawn Glass Noodle Salad)

Thailand has got to be one of my favourite countries in the world. It's just such a diverse place! A 1.5 hour plane ride from Bangkok will take you to this little island called Koh Samui. From the minute you get out of the air plane and walk to the little adorable shack-hut-like airport you know you've landed in paradise.

This island became a regular summer destination for my family when I was growing up. I have many fond memories of my summers in Koh Samui. Lazing around on the white sandy beaches, swimming in the sea, taking the boat out into the water and fishing- well actually, watching my father fish and wishing that I was back on shore.

I developed my admiration for Thai cuisine there. Fresh produce rarely needs more than a few ingredients to transform it into something magical. Having said that, I don't think I will ever even contemplate to make Thai Green Curry paste from scratch. I love my store bought green curry paste, thank you very much.

I love love love south-east Asian fruits. Rambutan, Mangosteen and Durian being my favourites! I know some of you will be like: Ew Durian! But seriously, give this stinky fruit a chance. It's like cheese: the stinkier the better. Durian has this creamy delicateness to it that I can't really compare to anything. Jackfruit comes close but not really. Anyway, mum and I are big fans of Durian and once we had kept a half eaten Durian fruit in our hotel room but, housekeeping threw it and the front desk asked us not to bring the fruit back into the hotel again. They had a NO DURIAN ALLOWED sign and everything.

No Durian Allowed signs are quite common
in Thailand

I love how lots of dishes in Thai cuisine are burning hot. Personally, coming from a country like India where we eat chillies on a regular basis, it's refreshing to see and taste other food preparations that use a lot of hot chillies. The Thai bird's eye chillies are really very spicy and used quite liberally in salads and curry preparations.

My favourite Thai dish of all time has got to be the Yum Woon Sen Koong (Thai prawn glass noodle salad). It's this spicy salad made with bean thread noodles, lots of bird's eye chillies, fish sauce, lemon juice, cilantro, Chinese celery (which i never put in my version of the dish because I can never find them :p) and prawns (although you could use other seafood stuff like squid, baby octopus and scallops). It usually also has cut tomatoes and cucumber slices. I love the freshness of the dish. The tangy-ness of the lemon goes really well with the salty, fermented (I know that the word fermented sounds disgusting but, for a person who is used to eating things like Japanese fermented soya-beans-Natto, fermented sauce is nothing. Also, you can't taste the fermented bit.) sauce.

To make this delicious, complicated looking yet simple dish, cook 300 grams of large prawns in a pot of salted boiling water. Drain and cool. It's important to double check prawns even when you buy the de-veined ones, because you don't want to eat a prawn that is not cleaned properly. Mainly because the vein is not really a vein but infact, it is poop.

Cut two Roman tomatoes into 1/8th, peel a medium cucumber and slice it into an inch and half in length and 1/2 inch in width, slice half an onion into thin strips and separate the layers, then, separate the leaves from the stalks of three bunches of cilantro/coriander and rough chop the stalks and 2 garlic cloves.

The ingredients for the sauce are usually pounded in a mortar but I really did not have the patience to pound stuff so I used my blender!! So, squeeze the juice of two limes into the blender with 7 tablespoons of fish sauce, rough chop 1.5 green chillies (I didn't have red bird's eye chilli) and dump that in with the garlic, the stalks of coriander and 1/2 teaspoon of sugar. Add 1/8 of a teaspoon (or a very small pinch) of Chinese chicken stock powder (if you don't have Chinese chicken stock powder, you can omit it) Blend till well mixed. Taste. Correct seasoning.

Finely julienne the remaining 1/2 chilli width wise and finely brunoise (fine dice) a clove of garlic. In a bowl, mix the sauce, the chilli and the garlic with the onions, half of the tomatoes and most of the coriander leaves. Let it sit for half hour to develop the flavours.

In the meantime, cook the noodles in boiling water for 2 minutes or till the noodles become transparent and soft. Drain and wash with cold water.

To assemble the dish, mix the prawns with the noodles and the remainder of the vegetables. Mix in the sauce and marinated vegetables with the noodles right before serving else the noodles will drink up the sauce.