Like the Sunshine Coast lifestyle, Daniel Jarrett’s approach to cooking has always been pretty relaxed. The chef of more than 25 years drifted into professional kitchens to get out of school, first into Italian and Greek eateries. Then in 2010, Jarrett started at Thai restaurant The Tamarind and found himself permanently hooked. “I’ve gone down that rabbit hole too far now to cook anything else,” says Jarrett. “It’s just the pantry of ingredients, the really punchy flavours, it’s super fresh and you just feel good eating it.”

Jarrett’s dish here is all those things, but it’s also versatile enough for the family table at Easter or Christmas. “Instead of having your old-school cooked prawns where people are sitting around peeling, you could do this on a platter and let people help themselves,” Jarrett says. “Even if you’re doing a barbecue, this could be your salad and then you could have your grilled meat.”

Like all the best dishes for entertaining, this one comes together in a flash. The place to start is the prawns. “If you’ve got cooked prawns already, that’s perfect,” Jarrett says. “If you haven’t you just need to poach them in the shell, peel them and chill them so you’ve got your prawn side of things done.”

Never miss a Brisbane moment. Make sure you're subscribed to our newsletter today.

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Alongside the prawns, the star here is the dressing: a nam jim style that perfectly sums up the spectrum of Thai flavours. “It’s playing on the whole hot, sweet, sour, salty balancing act,” says Jarrett. To make it, use a mortar and pestle, which helps to bruise the ingredients instead of just chopping them, starting with the fibrous coriander roots. When it all comes together, the flavour is going to be overwhelming, but that’s the idea. “The dressing is quite punchy, hot and in-your-face but by the time you’ve mixed it with your ingredients it’s totally different. You don’t neck a vinaigrette – it’s the same kind of thing.”

With the salad itself, the trick is balancing the size of chopped ingredients. Coriander and mint leaves are just picked from the stalk, but green onions and garlic chives should be cut on an angle, about three centimetres in length. “When we cut things in Thai [cuisine], we always cut things the width of a spoon because they eat with a spoon,” says Jarrett. Lemongrass needs its own technique, too, softening its woody texture. “About your thumb size from the fatter end, just nip the end off and peel off a few of the layers. Once you get to that you want to cut it into ringlets as finely as you can.”

One ingredient you might not be familiar with is roasted sticky rice. While it’s not a dealbreaker to leave out, it’s easy enough to do at home. “It’s what’s called glutinous rice, it’s just another form of rice,” says Jarrett. “Just put it in a pan over medium heat and keep moving it around until it goes a nice golden colour. Let it chill, put it in a coffee grinder and turn it into a powder and that gets sprinkled over the top.”

To serve, Jarrett recommends a more considered approach than just mixing everything up in a salad bowl. “Keep all the leaves and the lemongrass and all that to one side, put your prawns beside that and then dress the prawns and fold through and serve,” Jarrett says. “If you just dump it all on top of each other and everything you can end up killing the freshness. Always build your salad to the side, put your protein next to that, dress the protein and then just gently fold through.”

Daniel Jarrett’s hot and sour prawn salad

Serves 2-4

Prep time: 30 mins

Cooking time: 1-2 mins

Ingredients:

Pinch sea salt

8 medium green prawns, shelled with tail on, deveined

¼ cup coriander leaves, loosely packed

¼ cup mint leaves, loosely packed

¼ cup green onion, finely sliced on a 3cm-long angle

1 tbsp garlic chives, cut into 3cm slices

1 tbsp red shallots, sliced thinly lengthways

1 tsp lemongrass, finely sliced

1 cup of green mango or green papaya, finely shredded (julienned), optional

1 tsp kaffir lime leaves, finely sliced

¼ tsp ground roasted sticky rice

Dressing

1 coriander root, medium

1 whole bird’s eye chilli, medium size

2 small garlic cloves

20ml lime juice

20ml fish sauce

Method:

For the dressing, pound the coriander root, chilli and garlic in a mortar and pestle to a robust paste. Add lime juice then the fish sauce. Adjust to taste. Reserve. It should be hot, sour and slightly salty.

For the salad, in a pot of slow simmering water with the sea salt, plunge the peeled prawns for 1-1½ minutes (depending on size) until cooked. Strain and allow to rest. If prawns are larger than bite-size, slice on an angle into bite-sized pieces.

In a bowl, combine the salad herbs. Add prawns to the side of herbs. Spoon the dressing over the prawns then combine the prawns with the salad herbs.

To serve, place in the centre of a plate. Sprinkle with roasted ground sticky rice. Serves two as an entree or four in a shared banquet.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Spicers Retreats.