Dinner tonight is busy so I needed to prepare something quick using ingredients I already had. The salmon and prawns were in the freezer and I took them out for defrosting this morning. My children are both 14 years old and love Asian food so I tend to opt for those types of foods when we need healthy/quick/easy. One of my daughters has a little patch of eczema on the creases of her arm and I notice that this goes when she doesn’t eat gluten. Hence, the noodles are gluten-free rice noodles. For dessert I prepped some CoYo (a yoghurt made from coconut milk and unsweetened available from Waitrose or health food shops) with berries and grated chocolate.
Quick Thai Noodles
Serves 4
1 stalk fresh lemon grass
Coconut oil for cooking*
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
2 kaffir lime leaves (I keep a pack in the freezer and just use as I need)
1 or 2 cloves garlic
1-2cm piece fresh root ginger, peeled and finely chopped
1 x 400ml can coconut milk
2 salmon fillets, skinned and cut into 2cm cubes
180g cooked prawns
Handful baby spinach leaves
100g mangetout or runner beans, sliced in half
Juice of 1/2 lime
Handful fresh coriander leaves, torn
1 red chilli, thinly sliced
Medium or thin rice noodles
Bash the whole lemon grass stalk with something heavy, such as a rolling pin, to release the fragrant oils. Heat a little coconut oil in a large pan, add the onion, garlic, ginger, kaffir lime leaves and lemon grass and cook gently for 4-5 minutes, or until the onion has softened.
Add the coconut milk and 150ml water, and cook at a slow simmer for 15 minutes. Add the salmon and continue to simmer until it is cooked – about 5 minutes. In the meantime, prepare the rice noodles as instructions on the pack.
Add the prawns, spinach and mangetout or beans simmer for 2 more minutes. Squeeze in the lime juice, add the torn coriander and chilli, remove the lemon grass stalk and lime leaves and add the drained rice noodles – and you’re ready to serve dinner.
*I use coconut oil for because it is solid at room temperature, good for frying as it’s slower to oxidise and less damaged and chemically altered by heat than other cooking oils. So it’s arguably the healthiest oil to fry with.
Coyo and Berries
