Roasted Tomato, Chilli, Citrus & Lemongrass Salad
Tomatoes should never go in the fridge. I've been saying this for years. They're porous, they absorb the flavour of whatever is around them, and cold kills their texture. Put them next to the cheese and they'll taste of it within a couple of days. For this salad, where the tomato is doing everything, it matters more than in most recipes.
I grow tomatoes every summer, or at least I try to. My wife is the one who actually keeps them alive. I forget to water them, I'm in the kitchen for most of the day and they get neglected. The good news is that tomatoes need very little beyond water and some sun, and once you've grown your own you understand why a home-grown tomato in July is a completely different thing to anything from a supermarket shelf in January.
Everything goes on the BBQ here until properly blistered. Transfer the lot into a large bowl while still hot and build the dressing from the juices, palm sugar going in first to melt while the heat is still there. The smokiness from the grill becomes the backbone of the whole thing, and the charred lemongrass softens into the dressing in a way that raw lemongrass never would.
The clementine is there for sweetness. Lime gives you the acidity you need, but on its own the dressing can be too sharp. In Thailand they'd use mandarin, which is the right call, but good mandarins are inconsistent here. A clementine is sweet enough to round the dressing without pulling it somewhere else. Serve the salad immediately, as a side to grilled meat or fish, or on its own with jasmine rice.
Roasted Tomato, Chilli, Citrus & Lemongrass Salad
Serves: 2 as a main, 4 as a side | Prep: 10 mins | Cook: 15 mins
Ingredients
For the BBQ
200g vine cherry tomatoes
2 large beef tomatoes, sliced into 8 chunks
100g green tomatoes
2 long red chillies, stems removed
1 stick lemongrass
For the dressing and salad
1 tablespoon palm sugar (or soft dark brown sugar)
2 limes (1 juiced, 1 diced with the zest still on)
Juice of 1 clementine
50ml soy sauce (use tamari to keep it gluten-free)
50ml vegetable stock
1 teaspoon sesame oil
3 tablespoons Thai shallots, thinly sliced (or banana shallots)
3 spring onions, thinly sliced
15g coriander leaves
15g mint leaves, roughly torn
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
Get the BBQ to a high, direct heat. Add the cherry tomatoes, beef tomato chunks, green tomatoes, whole chillies and the whole lemongrass stalk. Cook directly over the heat, turning once or twice, for about 5 minutes on each side until blistered, charred in places and slightly softened. Transfer everything immediately into a large mixing bowl, including every drop of juice that runs out. That liquid is your dressing base.
While everything is still hot, stir in the palm sugar. The heat will melt it straight into the tomato juices. Once the lemongrass is cool enough to handle, peel away the charred outer layers and discard them. Slice the soft inner core as thinly as you can and add it back to the bowl along with the chillies.
Add the lime juice, diced lime, clementine juice and soy sauce. Stir and taste. It should be smoky, salty, sour and just sweet enough to hold together. Add a touch more soy if it needs salt, a squeeze more lime if it needs sharpness.
Add the vegetable stock, sesame oil, sliced shallots and spring onions. Toss gently. Fold through the coriander and mint leaves. Taste once more, season with black pepper and serve immediately.
Chef's notes
Use whatever tomatoes look best. The three-variety approach here is about different textures and levels of acidity, but a mix of whatever is ripe and has proper flavour at the market works equally well. The one thing that will let this dish down is a cold, flavourless supermarket tomato. Buy them a couple of days ahead and leave them on the counter.
If you don't have a BBQ, blister the tomatoes and chillies under a very hot grill or directly over a gas flame using tongs. You won't get the same smokiness but you'll get the char. In that case, add the raw lemongrass to the dressing sliced as finely as possible rather than grilling it whole.
This is one of those dishes that doesn't keep. Eat it while the tomatoes are still slightly warm from the grill.
This recipe was also published in Cook Thai.
Visit us at faranglondon.co.uk. Sauces and pastes for cooking Thai at home at payst.co.uk.
For more recipes, signed copies of my cookbooks are available at Payst: Cook Thai and Thai in 7
Head chef & founder of Farang London restaurant. Cookbook author of ‘Cook Thai’ & ‘Thai in 7’. Chief curry paste basher and co-founder of Payst London.