Thursday, April 1, 2010

My "Rainbow" Prawn Salad - The Leftovers Salad

        I really did not know what to call this salad. It was simply made of everything I could find in the fridge/freezer. Technically it wasn't a summer salad even though it looks quite light and summery. I find though that sometimes these are the best meals. About two weekends ago I was craving for some cooked prawns. I know that mum always buys these in bulk from the markets and freezes them so we always have them in supply. Prawn Cocktail was also on my mind, probabably as a result of having the King Crab Cocktail from Rockpool Bar & Grill last month for Ryan's birthday. At first I thought I would just make a simple Prawn Cocktail however as I was making this to take to work for lunch the next day I thought it needed a bit more substance so I raided the fridge and pulled out everything I thought would go well together in this salad. I was also feeding Ryan so a Prawn Cocktail would not have been enough for sustinance. The awesome thing about making your own prawn salad is you control how many prawns you get! I think I had about 10 and gave Ryan about 12 or 14 prawns. Would you be impressed if your wonderful girlfriend/boyfriend/partner gave you one of these for lunch? It sure beats the cafeteria food! I learnt my lesson from last time and left the dressing on the side.

        So what I found in the fridge to go with my prawns was: lettuce, carrots, some feta, quarter of a capsicum left over from my lamb salad, some thai basil, half a tomato, a grilled cob of corn, and a cucumber. I'd say that combination was enough to give me my recommended daily intake of vegetables =D I love variety in my dishes and find that sometimes I tend to overload my dishes trying to add in too many elements or I end up with so much I get sick of eating the same thing days on end, even after giving Ryan a few portions. What I managed to find seemed to have been in the right proportions and was perfect for two serves. Our fridge is almost always stocked full of food, you'll never really go hungry in my house, only if you're a picky eater.

        I was a bit lazy and didn't really want to make a dressing from scratch. I also realised that I had used all of my bottled Kraft Thousand Island dressing when I made my pasta salad the week before. I found a jar of this awesome Seafood Cocktail sauce from Masterfoods in the fridge (it goes really well with prawns!) which makes the base of my dressing. This sauce is quite strong, too strong for a light salad I thought so I had to thin it out. To counteract the rich flavour of the sauce I thought I would mix a dollop of it with some mayonaise. It was still quite heavy in texture so I found a lime in the fridge and squeezed some of the juice in and also a couple of spoonfuls of water to thin it out. When I asked him how the salad was, Ryan's response was "It was really good!" =D.

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