Vietnamese Seafood Stir-Fry

This Vietnamese Seafood Stir-Fry recipe is a delightful blend of prawns, baby squid, and scallops, stir-fried with cucumbers, spring onions, and chillies. It's a quick and easy meal that's packed with flavor.

Ingredients

• 300g tiger prawns
• 300g baby squid
• 4 scallops
• 2 cucumbers
• 2 large spring onions
• 2 red chillies
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 tbsp shrimp paste
• 2 tsp brown sugar (palm sugar preferred, but demerara is fine)
• 3 limes
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• Oil for frying
• Mint
• Coriander

Instructions

1. Prepare the seafood by deveining the prawns, cutting the squid into rings or small pieces, and slicing the scallops in half.
2. Prepare the vegetables by slicing the spring onions and cucumbers, slivering the garlic, and finely chopping one of the red chillies. Cut the other chilli into broad slices and chop your limes in half.
3. Heat a wok or large frying pan over high heat. Add oil and shrimp paste. Fry for about a minute, then add the chopped chilli, garlic, and white spring onion rings.
4. Add the cucumber batons, fish sauce, sugar, and the juice of one lime. Continue to fry and stir the mixture for another minute.
5. Add the seafood and cook briskly for another 2 minutes, until everything is just cooked through.
6. Serve in bowls and garnish with sliced chilli, green spring onion tops and half a lime. You can chop and sprinkle the herbs across but it’s common practice to just leave some on the side of the plate for people to tear up, scatter and season.

Cooking Time: 45 minutes

Servings: 4

Difficulty Level: Medium

Tips: Make sure to lightly score the squid flesh and leave the tentacles intact. Also, remove the watery seeds from the cucumbers using a teaspoon.