Easy Coconut Rice with Prawn Sambal

Brendan is taking us to Southeast Asia today with this delicious prawn sambal, yum. With a fragrant coconut rice. Yum, now what makes it so fragrant? So the coconut makes it nice and creamy and nutty, but we're also going to add some pandan leaves in there and lemongrass as well. It's one of the most interesting ingredients, pandan leaf, because you can use it in a savoury context and a sweet context. Yes, I think a lot of people describe it as like an Asian vanilla. Exactly. So it has that nice kind of grassy aroma to it, Okay, how do you make your coconut rice? So to start, we have some jasmine rice. We've just rinsed all the starch out of there, straight into the pot. And it has to be jasmine rice for coconut? Yes, jasmine again is quite fragrant, so it's a nice rice to cook with. So into that, we're going to add some coconut milk. Oh, the whole can? Yeah, as well as coconut milk, we're going to add some water. So water is just going to make it a bit lighter. We don't want it too gluggy, like you say. Yeah, and you're using the absorption method here. Yes, correct. So we're starting with a pot that's cold. We're going to bring it up to the boil. Yes, correct. A pinch of salt, and salt to bring out all those flavours. We're going to tie the pandan leaves into a knot, so just like that. When we were travelling in Malaysia, we used so much pandan leaf. So good. Yeah, just fell in love with it. I guess tying it just so it's just easy to take out later. And I know it's quite hard sometimes to get fresh pandan leaves, but you can find this in the frozen section as well. Okay, great. Which is fine if you can't find the fresh version. And then we're going to add the white part of the lemongrass. So I'm just going to cut that there, I reckon. And then just to bring out a bit more flavour, I'm going to use the back of the knife just to bruise it a bit. There we go. So I might just use that as like the spoon to mix it, make sure all the coconut is kind of combined. I'm going to add that in. Now we're going to turn it on. So heat on. We're going to bring that up to the boil. Once it's boiling, bring that down completely, put the lid on and let it cook. Fantastic. So whilst that's doing its thing, let's work on the sambal paste. Okay, look at those prawns. They are just stunning. We'll move them to the side. All right, what's in the sambal? Yeah, so we have a whole bunch of very fragrant, very common ingredients in Southeast Asian cooking. Shallots, they're very sweet, which is kind of like that nice base for any kind of sambal or curry. Yes. And then I'll talk through the rest while you're chopping that. We've also got some chillies. You could use really hot chillies if you want, or a chilli that's not so hot. So you can kind of play around there. Garlic and ginger, just like with any other sambal or like curry paste. We've also got some turmeric and kaffir lime. And I'm also going to just grab a bit more lemongrass. And you want three chillies for this? Yeah, I reckon let's make it nice and spicy. Spicy, so leave the seeds in or take them out? You can take a few of the seeds out, but I think the colour is what we want as well. We want that really red colour. Just the seeds in this one. I always ask Brendan, because I do like spicy, but I just don't like it crazy. Me too, no, I agree. And then just roughly chop that too? Yes, rough chop. It's always good to have a really good blender when you're trying to make your homemade pastes because you want it to blend nicely. I'm just going to add those lemongrass bits in. So we can add the ginger in, the garlic, turmeric. And I'm just going to finely grate that in there. Yeah, it might be easier. How good is fresh turmeric? If you can get your hands on it, fantastic. If you can't, we could probably just substitute the ground. You could use the ground turmeric, yeah, absolutely. They're pretty good. Yeah, I reckon that's good. Just give these lime leaves a rough chop as well. Add these in and then some oil as well, just a neutral oil. Okay, how much would you like? I can go, go all of it and let's, yeah, yeah. That's also going to help it blend. Yes, absolutely. All right, lid on and I'll give that a really good blend. Yes, and the rice is boiling, so I want to turn that down and put the lid on and let it cook. Great. That has really blended it nicely, hasn't it? Okay, so that paste is ready. We're going to put it straight into the wok and it's really going to take its time to cook down, so maybe five to 10 minutes because all of those ingredients are raw. We really want to cook them down. Okay, so you can see I've cooked that down. The colours change, starting to separate. I think we can put the prawns in now and fry those off. Smelling really good. I know, we've taken the heads off, left the tails and deveined them. Beautiful South Australian king prawns there. We actually might add a little bit more oil in. Absolutely. Here we go. Yeah, nice. Got enough oil? Yeah, that's perfect. So this is more of a dry stir fry. We're going to cook off the prawns for another two minutes. Yes. Not until they're fully cooked through. Just be mindful that we're going to add some of the beans in there as well. So we want to kind of time it perfectly. I reckon whilst this is cooking, you can probably go in with like the tamarind. Sure. So that's going to add that nice kind of sourness to it. We're going to go in with the brown sugar as well. Yeah, go straight in. That's going to help it caramelise. Then we've got soy sauce and fish sauce. Okay. Okay, so we're going to flip the prawns. We're going to add in some of the beans and the stock just to loosen up the sauce a bit. I can go straight in. Looks good. I might flip some of these prawns. I think go in with a bit of the stock, tell you when. We've got some lovely prawn stock there. Yeah, that looks good. Great. Okay, the lid goes on. I'm going to let that cook for another two to three minutes and then I reckon we can plate up. Oh wow, Brendan. Wow, that looks good. So good. And I like how the beans are still vibrant. They're not overcooked. And the slight caramelisation on the prawns as well. Now let's have a look at this rice. Yes. It's in perfect amount of time. How good does that look? Oh, the smell. It smells amazing. Yeah. And that doesn't look gluggy at all. You know, you think with coconut milk it can be sometimes gluggy. This is light and fluffy. Yes, I'm happy you said that. Let's plate up. I'm going to go straight in. So I've got a little rice bowl here. Yep. Which, this is just a little fancy way of plating up. You can go straight onto the plate but I'm going to actually invert it on. We want fancy. Yeah. I mean, it's really not that fancy. It is though. But just like that, we're going to go onto the plate. Okay. Ready? Yep. There we go. Just like that. Gorgeous. Rice on. There you go. Oh, I love that. Move that out of the way. It is very impressive when you do that. On with some of the sambal, the prawn and bean sambal. While I'm doing that, I'm going to get you to slice up one of the eggs in half. Sure. Straight onto the plate. That's fantastic. It's like you said, not swimming in sauce because it's not that type of stir fry or curry. There we go. Let's start with that. Let's see how we go. A little egg on the side. Yeah, like just on the side. Just on the side. Yep. Also got some cucumber. I always like that touch too because it's just pop of freshness. And I just like to overlap them slightly. Just like that. Maybe like under the egg there. And then to finish, just some peanuts on top. There we go. All right, Justine, I reckon it's time for you to taste it. All right. You should taste it. Yeah, I'm going to have some as well. I'm very excited to try this. Little prawn. I feel like these are massive. I know, what am I saying? Little prawn, big prawns. And this coconut rice. Coconut rice. So good. Those prawns are so fragrant. And the coconut rice, I think I've been making it wrong all these years because that is fluffy and light and not gluggy. I also kind of like the tang from the tamarind. Yes, that's what I'm tasting. It's not too rich. There's like a nice brightness to it as well. Absolutely. This is one of the many recipes that you can get in your new book. It's all about rice. Yes, heaps like this. Really easy. Lots of flavour and lots of different ways to cook rice. If you want to know how to cook the perfect rice, that is the book to look for. I love that. That's one of my favourites. Thank you.