Tropical fruit, good limes and a hot pan do more for a Gold Coast kitchen than a long list of pastes you will not fry in a holiday apartment. These recipes lean on lime, herbs and rice. They do not copy Bendigo’s yellow curry or Carlton’s glass noodles. The unique complete recipe is a green mango and herb salad with a lime-chilli dressing, served with coconut jasmine rice. It is a humid-night table: sour, hot, salty, a little sweet from the mango, and cooling from coconut rice without turning the salad into dessert.
If green mango is elusive, firm green papaya or a very firm green apple plus extra lime will keep the structure. Ripe mango belongs after dinner, or in sticky rice, not in this bowl.
Coastal shopping
Burleigh fruit shops, Southport Asian grocers, and the highway-side shops that feed locals will often have green mango, limes, chilli, mint, coriander and Thai basil in a way Ballarat will not. Buy more limes than one. Humidity and a generous hand go together. Fish sauce, palm sugar, roasted peanuts, shallots, dried shrimp if you eat them.
Prawns are a temptation. This salad can take a few grilled or poached prawns on top; it does not require them. If you add them, cook them separately and do not let them steam the herbs.
Coconut rice is supermarket jasmine plus a can and a pinch of salt. It is not mango sticky rice. Sticky rice is a different grain and a different method; if you want that classic, soak glutinous rice and steam it, then fold in warm coconut. Tonight, coconut jasmine is the weeknight Coast version.
The Gold Coast tasting notes tell you to watch sugar. The dressing below watches it. The hub tells you to ignore the view; you may look at the view from the apartment once the salad is dressed.
Green mango and herb salad with coconut rice
Serves four as a shared salad with rice, or two as a main. Dress at the table if you can. Green mango should be shredded, not cubed — a grater or a papaya shredder or a sharp knife into fine matchsticks.
Ingredients — coconut rice
- 1½ cups jasmine rice, rinsed
- 200ml coconut milk
- 250ml water
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar, optional
Ingredients — salad
- 2 firm green mangoes, peeled and shredded (about 4 cups)
- 1 handful mint
- 1 handful coriander
- 1 handful Thai basil if you have it
- 2 Asian shallots, thinly sliced
- 2 tablespoons roasted peanuts, crushed
- 1 tablespoon dried shrimp, rinsed and chopped, optional
- 1–2 bird’s eye chillies, sliced
- 4 cherry tomatoes, halved, optional
- Lime wedges
Dressing:
- 3 tablespoons lime juice
- 1½ tablespoons fish sauce
- 1 teaspoon palm sugar, dissolved
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 1 extra chilli, pounded, optional
Method
Cook the rice: combine rinsed rice, coconut milk, water, salt and sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer, lid on, lowest heat, 14 minutes. Rest 10 minutes, lid on. Fluff. It should be fragrant and a little richer than plain jasmine, not porridge.
Mix the dressing and taste it. Sour and salty first. Palm sugar only to round the lime. Toss mango, herbs, shallot, chilli, tomato, dried shrimp and most of the peanuts with the dressing. Taste a strand of mango. It should make you sit up. Add dressing or lime. Finish with remaining peanuts. Serve at once with coconut rice and lime wedges. The rice is the mild column; the salad is the hot column. That is a Gold Coast mixed table without a second curry.
Notes
No dried shrimp: skip them; vegetarians must skip them and use a vegetarian fish sauce or extra lime plus soy. No green mango: green papaya is the closest; cucumber matchsticks plus extra lime is a different salad with the same dressing. Grilled prawns: 150g, cooked, cooled slightly, folded through at the end so they do not wilt the mint.
Do not add ripe mango or a sweet chilli bottled sauce. That is how strip salads go wrong, and you already know that from the reviews page.
If you want a wok dish as well, the pad krapow on the main recipes page loves this climate: high heat, short time, holy basil if the grocer had it, supermarket basil if not. Fruit stays out of the curry. Fruit belongs here, green and shredded, or later, ripe, on a plate by itself.
Holiday-apartment version: a box grater, two green mangoes, a mug of dressing, rice cooked in coconut milk in the only saucepan. Do not hunt four pastes. Humidity will wilt herbs if you dress early; toss when people are standing in the kitchen, still sandy. Extra limes in the fruit bowl are the whole method. If mango is ripe and only ripe, eat it after, and make a cucumber-and-herb salad with the same dressing rather than forcing sweetness into the sour bowl.
Dried shrimp are loud. If a guest does not eat them, keep them in a saucer. Peanuts the same. The food guide is the allergy script; this salad is where it becomes a saucer on a Burleigh bench.