Koh samui salad recipe

Ingredients

• 300 g medium rice noodles
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
• 6 ripe cherry tomatoes
• 1 fresh red chilli
• ½ a bunch of fresh basil
• 1 heaped tsp golden caster sugar
• 3 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 3 limes
• 1 bunch of radishes
• 2 carrots
• ½ a cucumber
• 1 bulb of fennel
• ½ a white cabbage
• 100 g cooked peeled prawns

• 100 g shelled peanuts
• 2 tbsp sesame seeds
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 3 dried kaffir lime leaves
• 1 bunch of fresh mint
• 350 g silken tofu
• 1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
• 1 lime

1. Put the noodles in a bowl and cover with boiling water, mixing up regularly to separate. In the frying pan, toast the peanuts and sesame seeds with the sesame oil and crumbled lime leaves until golden, tossing often. Put the peeled garlic and ginger, tomatoes, chilli and top leafy half of the basil into the processor with the sugar, fish sauce, sesame oil and juice of 3 limes, then blitz until fine.
2. With the dressing still in the processor, swap to the fine slicer and slice the radishes, trimmed carrots, cucumber, quartered fennel and wedged-up cabbage. Tip it all into a big bowl, scrunch and dress the salad quite roughly with clean hands, then have a taste and tweak the flavours if needed.
3. Drain the noodles, add to the salad bowl with the prawns, and toss together. Rip off the top leafy half of the mint, roughly chop it and scatter over the top. Cut the tofu into 2 cm chunks and pile in the middle of the salad drizzled with chilli sauce. Scatter over the toasted nuts and serve with lime wedges.