Rice Crusted Snapper and Green Papaya Salad

Cook Time 30 minutes

Servings 4

Ingredients

4 x 150g snapper fillet, skin on, pin boned
Peanut oil
½ cup jasmine rice, dry roasted in a pan until it turns white

Green Papaya Salad
1 small green papaya
½ bunch coriander, roughly torn
2 snake beans, cut into 4 cm lengths
4 cherry tomatoes, quartered
½ cup peanuts, roasted & chopped
2 birds eye chillies, seeds removed & sliced finely

Dressing
2 birds eye chillies, sliced
2 garlic cloves, sliced
50g palm sugar, chopped
100ml lime juice
100ml fish sauce

Method

Place the garlic, chilli & palm sugar in a food processor and blitz until fine. Add the fish sauce & lime juice & blitz again until the sugar is dissolved.

To make the salad, peel the papaya and then continue to use your peeler to make thin slices of the green papaya until you reach the seeds. Stack the slices of papaya on top of each other and using a sharp knife slice them as fine as possible. Toss the papaya with the rest of the ingredients and enough of the dressing to coat nicely, use your hand to squash and bruise the ingredients together.

Place the roasted rice in a food processor and pulse until the rice is ground but not to a powder. Slightly more coarse than sand is what you’re looking for. Heat a little oil in a non stick frying pan over a medium to high heat. Season the fish with salt and then dip the flesh side in the rice and press to coat well. Place the snapper into the pan with the rice crusted side down. Cook for for about 2 minutes on the heat and then turn over to the skin side and place into a 180°C oven for about 5 minutes until cooked through. Place a large mound of the salad on the platter and then put the fish crust side up on the plate in front of it.