Julie Goodwin's Prawn, Mango and Avocado Salad

It wouldn't be summer without a prawn and mango salad and this one's really simple, really quick and has a beautiful zingy green dressing. So we'll start with the dressing. First of all I'm going to zest a couple of limes. So I use the zest in this dressing because the zest of citrus fruit has all the beautiful essential oils that give it that fragrance and that real sort of depth and the juice is where the acidity is that sort of brightness and the zing so I like to use both. So to get the most juice out of a lime or even a lemon I like to zest it first because that loosens it up and then you can either give it 10 seconds in the microwave that really releases the juice but you just kind of give it a little roll like that and that loosens everything up inside there. Next a clove of garlic and a medium-sized jalapeno pepper. I'm just going to take the stem off and take the seeds out. I take the seeds out and the membrane because that's where the heat is in the chilli and I want this to have the flavour and a little bit of the zing but I don't want it to burn anybody's mouth. Once you've handled chillies you definitely want to wash your hands before you touch your eyes or go the bathroom. So I'm going to put in about half a bunch of coriander. If you buy your coriander with the roots on you're just going to take those off for this recipe. You can pop them in the freezer to use in a curry paste for another day but for today we just want the stems and the leaves. Into that I'm going to add some honey just a little bit of sweetness and then a quarter of a cup of extra virgin olive oil and a good pinch of salt and some ground black pepper and I'm just going to blitz that up until it's nice and smooth. So I'm blitzing it until it's pretty smooth because I want to make sure that all the garlic is broken down and that it's going to spread nice and evenly on the salad. It smells amazing it's really fresh and really sweet and fragrant and I can pop that in the fridge until it's time to build the salad. So for the base of this salad I'm using these beautiful little baby gem lettuces and they come in green or you can get these lovely purple ones as well so mix it up to make it look beautiful. I'm just going to cut those in quarters. When you're selecting prawns you want to look for a nice vibrant colour in the heads not a blackish or greenish tinge around that area and also the smell it shouldn't have that sort of ammonia smell to it nice and fresh. Sometimes if you ask the fishmonger might let you taste so ask if you can taste their prawns before you buy. So to peel the prawns the first thing I do is twist the head like so and take that off. Next I go in with my thumb in between the legs and get in under the shell and take that shell off sort of pinch it at the bottom to take half the body off. I go in again down here and at this point you can either leave the tail on for presentation or you can just squeeze it right at the end and get all that prawn meat out and take the tail off. And really important is to take out the intestinal tract so to do that you just kind of look in that bit there and gently lift it with your thumb you can see that I'm just going to peel that back until I've taken all of that off I discard that that way no one's eating it. I come from a long line of prawners so we used to go out prawning in the lakes down on the south coast with our hand nets and our torches and we'd come home with a haul of little tiny school prawns they'd get boiled up in a big pot of salted water and we'd spend the whole next day shelling those tiny little prawns and making prawn sandwiches on fresh white bread with butter absolutely peak summer. I can tell you these great big prawns are a lot easier to peel than those little tiny school prawns. So next I'm going to slice up the avocado I just run the knife right around where the pit would be a little twist and I just gently tap the knife into the seed and twist that to get it out. I'm going to cut this avocado across and I do that by just running the knife through it while it's in its skin makes it nice and easy and I'm just going to run a spoon around the inside of the skin to get that out. So when you're buying avocados it's not always easy to tell what's ready to eat and what's not without really squashing it you don't want to do that because you're just bruising all the fruit for everybody else so one of the little tips is this if it's got its little stem on there if that flicks off really easily it's ripe and ready this one's not flicking off very easily and I can feel even without squashing it that that's quite firm if you buy one that's hard like this just pop it in a bowl for a few days or put it near your bananas if you need it to ripen up a bit faster. If the avocados in the shop don't have the little stem in there just really gently feel it to see if there's any yield to it at all you don't want to dig your fingers into it because you will bruise it. When you're choosing mangoes you can tell from the fragrance whether it's ripe and ready to eat. For eating straight away it's fine for them to be really nice and soft for this salad you want it to be slightly firmer than that so it doesn't turn to mush so I'm looking for something that's fragrant but still has a little bit of firmness to it. So to take the flesh off this mango I'm going to cut the cheeks down either side of the seed so I go down either side of the stem there and I'll avoid the seed now so I don't waste any of the middle I take the stem out peel that and then just go around and cut pieces off there or just eat it. I use a water glass to get the mango out in one go or you could also use the metal spoon like I did for the avocado and I'll just slice those up. So now I just arrange everything over these baby gem lettuces. If you're taking this to a party what I would do is have your lettuce cut, your mango cut, your prawns peeled and your dressing made and I would assemble it and cut the avocado right before serving. If you want to cut the avocado a bit earlier you can squeeze a bit of lime juice over it and that will help to stop it from going brown but you really need to assemble this right before you eat it. I'm going to scatter some sliced spring onions over the top and then generously drizzle with that beautiful zesty dressing. So there you have it it's a showstopper of a summer salad perfect for a banquet table or just for your midweek dinner.