A Carlton kitchen is often a sharehouse: one decent pan, a crowded fridge, a lime that someone else bought, and a table that may grow by two housemates who “won’t stay long”. These recipes assume that. They do not assume a restaurant pass, and they do not copy the Melbourne relish or the CBD pepper pork. The complete unique recipe here is yum woon sen — a glass-noodle salad with minced pork, prawn optional, herbs, and a lime–fish-sauce dressing you mix in a mug.
If you cannot find green papaya, this is the salad you wanted anyway.
Inner-north shopping
Walk toward the grocers that already feed Lygon’s other cuisines, or take a tram toward the market. You need:
- dried glass noodles (mung bean vermicelli)
- fish sauce, limes, palm sugar or brown sugar
- garlic, bird’s eye chillies, shallots
- mince — pork is classic; chicken works
- herbs: mint, coriander, Thai basil if you see it
- tomato, celery or cucumber, roasted peanuts
- optional small cooked prawns
Holy basil is for krapow night using the main recipes. Glass noodles live in the cupboard for weeks, which is why this is a sharehouse dish. Herbs do not live in the cupboard. Buy them the day you dress the salad, using the same freshness test as the Carlton tasting notes.
Rice still matters. Cook jasmine even when the noodle salad is the star; someone will want a mild coconut curry beside it, and the food guide will remind you to split heat across the table rather than across an argument.
Yum woon sen — glass-noodle salad with pork
Serves four as a shared salad, or two as a main with rice. Dress at the last minute. The noodles should be cool, not fridge-cold, and the mince should be warm enough to perfume the herbs without wilting them into spinach.
Ingredients
- 80g dried glass noodles
- 200g pork mince
- 1 teaspoon fish sauce, for the pork
- 8 small cooked prawns, optional
- 1 tomato, cut into wedges
- 1 celery stalk, thinly sliced, or half a cucumber, seeded and sliced
- 2 Asian shallots or 1 small red onion, thinly sliced
- 1 handful mint leaves
- 1 handful coriander, stems chopped, leaves left whole
- 2 tablespoons roasted peanuts, roughly crushed
- Lime wedges, to serve
Dressing:
- 3 tablespoons lime juice
- 2 tablespoons fish sauce
- 1 teaspoon palm sugar, dissolved in a splash of warm water
- 1–2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 2–6 bird’s eye chillies, sliced (start with two in a Carlton sharehouse)
Method
Soak the glass noodles in recently boiled water until just tender — they go from wire to silk quickly, often in 5–8 minutes. Drain, rinse under cold water, and cut them a few times with scissors so you are not slurping metre-long strands. Mix the dressing in a mug and taste it: sour and salty first, heat second, sweetness only as a rounder. Adjust now. You cannot adjust once the noodles drink it.
Cook the pork mince in a dry-ish pan with a teaspoon of fish sauce until it is cooked and a little caramelised. Cool for a couple of minutes. In a wide bowl combine noodles, pork, prawns if using, tomato, celery, shallot and herbs. Pour on most of the dressing and toss with your hands. Taste a noodle. Add the rest of the dressing if it needs it. Finish with peanuts and extra chilli. Serve at once, with lime wedges and, if the table is hungry, a bowl of jasmine rice.
Notes
No prawns: skip them. Vegetarian: swap pork for crumbled firm tofu fried until golden, and use a vegetarian fish sauce or a mix of soy and lime — it will be a different salad and still a good one. No mint: use extra coriander and a little basil, and know you have lost a perfume.
Leftovers are poor; the noodles drink the dressing and sulk. Make the dressing in the mug, cook the mince, and hold both until people are actually in the kitchen. That is sharehouse craft.
If you wanted pad Thai, do not turn this salad into it. Go to how to make pad Thai at home. If you wanted to eat out on the university edge, the Carlton hub is the choosing guide. This page’s job is a bowl of sour noodles and a table that can still talk.
Sharehouse logistics: someone will open the fridge and eat the herbs you bought. Put the mint in a jar of water or cook the same night. Glass noodles can live in the cupboard next to the cheap fish sauce. Limes cannot. If the only lime is a sad one, skip this salad and cook the krapow method with supermarket basil rather than serving a flat dressing. A poor yum is worse than no yum.
Toasted rice powder, if you find it, can go on this salad in a pinch and will nudge it toward larb. Do not mix the two names on a label. Larb wants minced meat, toasted rice, mint and no noodles. This recipe wants noodles. Honesty about dishes is the same literacy as the explainer, applied in a terrace kitchen with one chopping board.