Vietnamese noodle salad with salmon

You don’t usually see a Vietnamese noodle salad with salmon so I thought I would give it a go and add a few other ingredients to make it more substantial.  After all, you can never have too many salmon recipes with a steam oven!

A perfect Summer salad, it would also be ideal served with marinated, grilled and sliced chicken or fresh prawns.

You can substitute the vegetables for whatever you have to hand.  Snow peas or sugar snap peas would be nice too.  If using snow peas that are large slice them in half on the diagonal so they are easier to eat.

Timing on the salmon is for ‘pink in the middle’ smaller fillets.  Adjust your cooking times to suit.  I use to recommend to cook whole fillets at 95°C and fillets to flake at 100°C.  I now think 95°C is enough for both.

Ingredients:  Serves 4-6

½ large packet rice noodles or 2 small packets thin ‘bean thread’ noodles
2-4 salmon fillets, skin removed
1 medium carrot, grated
handful green beans, halved
½ cup halved cherry tomatoes
¼ cup each chopped coriander & Vietnamese mint
1 cup bean shoots, soaked in ice water and drained
½ telegraph cucumber, seeds removed and sliced diagonally
¼ cup toasted peanuts, roughly chopped

Dressing:

2 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
2 tsp brown or palm sugar

Method:

1. Cover the noodles in boiling water for 4-5 minutes.  Run a little cold water over the noodles and set aside to drain and cool.
2. Sprinkle the salmon with salt and pepper and put into the perforated steamer tray with the beans on the side.
3. Cook the salmon and beans @ 95ºC for 3 minutes.  Refresh beans in ice water and drain.  You may need longer for a large piece of salmon see comments above.
4. Shake the dressing ingredients together in a jar.
5. Plate up with the salad in the centre, small ‘nests’ of noodles on the side and the salmon flaked over the top.
6. Sprinkle with toasted peanuts and extra coriander and drizzle the dressing over to taste.