Del's Thai Tomato Salad with Toasted Rice and Crispy Shallots

We know summer is nearly here when tomatoes finally drop in price and start landing in the supermarket, and the plants in the garden are not far behind them. Whatever you bring home, keep them out of the fridge, because cold is what ruins a tomato's taste, and they are so much better at room temperature.

This Thai tomato salad gives them a dressing that hits hot, salty, sweet and sour all at once, with toasted rice and peanut crumb and crispy shallots and garlic over the top. It's a cracker of a dish that will impress with flavour and looks!

Serves 4 as a side · Prep 15 min · Cook 10 min

How to make it

1. Start with the crumb. Add the rice and peanuts to a dry pan over low heat and toast for 8 minutes, until golden brown.
2. Tip them into a pestle and mortar with a pinch of salt and grind until they resemble fine breadcrumbs. If it's too coarse, it isn't pleasant to eat. Set aside.
3. While that's toasting, get your shallots and garlic ready. Halve the shallot and cut out the root so the layers separate. Stack the layers on top of one another and cut into the thinnest strips you can. Peel the garlic and slice into thin rounds.
4. Add the vegetable oil to a pan and heat to 185C. No thermometer; drop in a slice of onion, and when it sizzles the moment it hits, you're ready to go.
5. Fry the shallots in two batches. If you crowd the pan, the water coming out of them makes the oil bubble up and spit.
6. Fry for 2 to 3 minutes, until crisp and golden. Lift them out with a metal slotted spoon onto a plate lined with a paper towel.
7. Now the garlic, which is quicker, takes closer to 1-2 minutes. Same spoon, same paper towel. Sprinkle both with salt.
8. For the dressing, finely grate the shallot, garlic, ginger and lime zest into a bowl. Add the lime juice and palm sugar. Taste a little of your chilli before you commit to it; sometimes they are fiery hot and other times very mellow, then dice and add.
9. Coarsely grate in the 2 large tomatoes, skin and all. Add the olive oil, then the fish sauce instead of salt to season.
10. Stir half the kaffir lime leaf slivers through the dressing and keep the rest for the top.
11. Bring it together. Cut the larger tomatoes into chunks and halve the cherry tomatoes, some lengthways and some across, so you get different shapes on the plate.
12. Add the tomatoes to the dressing along with 1 tbsp of the rice and peanut crumb. Tear in the mint and coriander, and give it a mix.
13. To serve, add a good sprinkle of the rice crumb, the rest of the lime leaf slivers, add the fried garlic and shallots, and a few more mint and coriander leaves over the top.

Del's Tip: A Thai dressing should taste equal parts spicy, salty, sweet and sour. If one of them is more present over the others, bring the other three up to meet it. More fish sauce for salt, more palm sugar for sweet, more lime for sour, more chilli for heat. Taste as you go, and you'll get a feel for it quickly. If you had some basil or Thai Basil growing in your garden, this would also make a delicious addition torn up with the mint and coriander at the end.

Recipe by Del Holland. For more seasonal recipes, head to Dishes with Del