Fruit & Nut Salad with Spicy Coconut & Saffron Prawns | Tropical Salad with Spicy Prawns | Fall Salad Recipes
19 October
This year the autumn in Maharashtra doesn't feel like autumn at all. It feels like we are stuck forever in the monsoon season itself. Rain , rain and more rain is enough to drive us crazy. Thus to cheer myself up I checkout the vibrant fall pictures my friends are sharing on their social accounts from across the world. As much as I love Indian festivals around this time, I love the feeling of colorful autumn, thanksgiving and a white Christmas of the states. It takes me back to the time I was staying in Atlanta and how vibrant the entire place used to become during the fall season - the prettiest of all seasons! I remember the road trips along the Blue ridge parkway and the stunning visuals it presented. I couldn't peel off my eyes even for a second from the vista on both side of the road. I think I will create a separate blog post to revive the memories of a log cabin stay during the autumn in Chattanooga, Georgia.
So you get the drift. I am very much transported back to those red, yellow and magenta days whenever I hear the word fall or autumn. And it has been my longest standing desire to prepare fall recipes. So this year I have been experimenting a few recipes with the fall theme on mind. I tried incorporating pumpkin in many of the recipes. And I found an interesting thing when I was doing research on the fall recipes. I liked all the pumpkin recipes which were more south east Asian interpretation of the American fall staples. I felt they are more zesty and flavorful. I might be totally wrong in this case, but going by the recipe ingredients this is what I felt. I never knew before this that even in Thai cuisine there is a pumpkin soup or a fall harvest salad. The ingredients they had used to make their versions aligned more to my Asian taste buds.
I am not at all a salad person. At least I was not at all a salad person before the lockdown. The only reason is that its too much of a work and the phycological thought process is that when it doesn't have a bread or rice in it, it is not going to be filling enough. But that notion changed during the lockdown when we started to focus more on healthy eating habits. Thus I started experimenting with different kinds of salad bowls. This particular salad was thought of as part of an Instagram contest (yes Instagram is kind of taking over my life, which I feel I need to restrict for good!) We wanted to create something fresh and feisty and different form the usual salads. It had to define our personality. That's very cheeky I know but yeah that's how the food should be. Its a reflection of myself I feel. And the Thai versions of both the harvest recipes - pumpkin soup and Autumnal salad felt like what would perfectly suite my palate.
When we think fall ingredients a few things instantly come to the mind - butternut squash, sweet winter pumpkins, crisp apples, pears, sweet potato and so on. They are so lovely ones that you can not just go wrong with any combination you choose.
This can be passed off as a both a fall and a summer salad. Its a feisty salad which will tease your taste buds with the spiciness of the bird's eye chilli, sweetness from the honey dressing, citrusy burst from the tropical fruits, buttery tropical vibes from saffron coconut prawns and to balance it all off the earthiness from the toasted nuts. It basically is a warm fall salad that will keep you cozy on a chilly fall night.
Marination Time : 30 minutes
- Fresh Prawns with tails - 20
- Peanuts - 1/4th cup
- Walnuts - 1/4th cup
- Pumpkin Seeds - 1/4th cup
- Onion - 1/2
- Cherry Tomato - 6
- Lettuce - 1/2
- Apple - 1
- Pineapple - 2/4th cup diced
- Mosambi/Sweet Lime - 1
- Salt
- Saffron Strands
- Sesame oil - 1 tsp
- Red Chilli powder - 1/2 tsp
- Bird's eye chilli - 1 chopped
- Coconut paste (Optional) - 1 tsp
- Lime juice - 1/2 tsp
- Salt as per taste
- Shredded Coconut - 1/2 cup
- Honey - 2 tsp
- Lemon Juice - 1/2
- Fish Sauce - 1/2 tsp
- Sesame oil - 1 tsp
- Roasted Pumpkin Seeds - 2 tsp
- Bird's eye chilli - 2 chopped
- Thick bottom skillet/ non stick skillet
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