Noodle salad and fried shrimp: Mandy Yin's recipes for Malaysian home-style prawns

The Guardian

11-07-2025

The 14 states of Malaysia are located on a peninsula to the south of Thailand and on the island of Borneo, so it is no surprise that we absolutely adore seafood. Prawns are my seafood of choice at home, and I lean into store-cupboard staples to bring together easy, quick meals for my small family. Today's glorious noodle salad is perfect for summer, not least because it's a simple assembly job, while the second recipe, if you make a little effort to devein some shell-on prawns, rewards you with the most magnificent plate of them that you'll ever eat.
Kerabu is an umbrella term in Malay denoting a vibrant salad of vegetables and herbs, dressed with a fiery sambal, shrimp paste and lime to bring everything together. The dressing is spicy, sharp and smells wonderful from all the herbs. You might also find kerabu noodle salads. This is my very easy version, perfect for hot days, because it doesn't involve any cooking. I've substituted tinned anchovies (use the best you can afford) for the shrimp paste to avoid having to toast the paste. Coincidentally, when I blitzed up the first test of this dressing, it smelled very much like cincalok, another Malaysian speciality of fermented krill mixed with shallots and chillies. A traditional kerabu salad will always include laksa leaves (AKA hot mint), but these are tricky to find in the UK, so I have used a mixture of herbs more commonly found in British supermarkets, not least because I find that the basil goes a little way towards the fragrant pepperiness of hot mint.
Prep 25 minSoak 10 minServes 4-6
For the dressing2 fresh red chillies, seeds and all, stalks discarded, flesh finely chopped1 banana shallot, peeled and roughly chopped 4 fresh makrut lime leaves, stems removed50g tin anchovy fillets, not drainedJuice of ½-1 lime, to taste
1 tbsp dark brown sugar
3 tbsp chilli sauce (I make my own tomato sambal (see recipe below), but I also like Maggi's garlic chilli sauce or sriracha), plus extra to serve1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp tamarind paste, or Worcestershire sauce (I use Lea & Perrins)
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
For the salad150g mung bean glass noodles, or rice vermicelli noodles, soaked in just-boiled water for at least 10 minutes30g bunch fresh basil (Thai, holy or regular), leaves picked 30g bunch fresh mint, leaves picked and roughly chopped30g bunch fresh coriander, roughly chopped, stems and all300g cooked and peeled small cold-water prawns (defrosted if frozen, and any excess water gently squeezed out)¾ cucumber, deseeded and cut into 1cm cubes
Put all the dressing ingredients in a small food processor and blitz to a smooth puree.
Drain the soaked noodles and put them in a large bowl. Roughly tear the basil leaves into the noodles.
At least 15 minutes before you want to serve, to give all the flavours a chance to come together, put all the remaining ingredients and the dressing into the noodle bowl, mix thoroughly and set aside. That said, if you're making this well in advance, don't add the cucumber until 15 minutes before serving, because it releases water after a while, which will make for a very wet salad. Serve with extra sambal or chilli sauce on the side.
This brilliant sambal is a perfect balance of spicy, sweet and tangy, and I'll take it any day over sriracha and even my beloved Maggi garlic chilli sauce. The best thing is that it comes together extremely easily and quickly, and keeps for months in the fridge.
Prep 5 min
Cook 15 min
Makes 300g
150g fresh red chillies, stalks discarded, flesh roughly chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
60ml vegetable oil
3 tbsp tomato puree
1½ tsp table salt
4½ tbsp dark brown sugar
Using a stick blender or a high-speed blender, blitz the chillies, garlic and oil to a fine puree. Put a small, nonstick saucepan on a medium heat, add the chilli-garlic mixture and stir-fry for 10 minutes; if it starts to splutter too much, turn down the heat a little. Add the tomato puree, salt, sugar and 80ml water, stir-fry for two minutes, just to dissolve everything, then take off the heat and leave to cool. Once cool, decant into a sterilised jar, seal and store in the fridge.
This is an excellent dish from my dad's repertoire. It is based on a dish he used to have as a child in a Chinese restaurant in Malacca. We know it as har lok fried prawns. Yes, it's a bit fiddly, because it requires you to devein shell-on prawns, but that's just about the only real work involved. Frozen, whole, raw jumbo prawns from the supermarket freezer aisle are generally cheaper than fresh ones, so by all means use them instead. The magic of the prawn-infused sauce comes from the tomalley released from the prawn heads and shells.
Prep 5 minCook 30 minServes 4
1kg large shell-on prawns, defrosted if using frozen
4 tbsp vegetable oil
2 fresh red chillies, finely sliced 4 spring onions, trimmed and finely sliced3 tbsp light soy sauce 110g ketchup – I use Heinz¼ tsp chilli powder
Devein the prawns by sticking a toothpick through the second shell joint from the tail and pulling up through the flesh. The vein will become loose, so all you have to do then is to pull out the rest of it. Use scissors to trim off each prawn's two long feelers and snip off the very sharp end of the prawn's head.
Put the oil in a large nonstick wok on a high heat. Add the chillies and half the spring onions, stir-fry for a minute, then add the prawns and stir-fry for five or so minutes, until nearly all the shells have turned bright pink – leave the wok alone for 20 seconds at a time between stirring, so the prawns cook through.
Add the soy sauce, ketchup and chilli powder, and stir-fry for a further two minutes, until the sauce thickens. Spoon on to a platter, garnish with the remaining spring onions and eat immediately.
These recipes are edited extracts from Simply Malaysian: Everyday Dishes to Cook at Home, by Mandy Yin, published later this month by Quadrille at £27. To pre-order a copy for £24.30, go to guardianbookshop.com
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