Turkey salad with Chilli Jam and Toasted Coconut.

The salad ingredients awaiting dressing

Substitutions / Omissions / Deletions:

As mentioned in the menu post, we opted to not purchase pre-roasted turkey, but to use some chicken breast instead. We thought we had some in the freezer, but when I couldn't find any, I bought some fresh chicken breast that was on special. The chicken breast was cooked in a non-stick frypan without any fat or oils.

We only purchased a quarter of a cabbage when shopping, and used only about half of that. We still had leftovers.

I accidentally bought desiccated coconut instead of shredded coconut, so that was used instead.

We only used two shallots for the dressing, and only 2tsp of dried chilli flakes.

Prep tips: 

Given that the whole idea of eating salads in summer is that you don't need to turn the oven on, my partner opted to toast the coconut in a dry pan over the stove.

I'm not a fan of finely chopping anything, particularly shallots or onions, so I use a Tupperware Turbo Chef to dice these up.

We tend to use Microplane graters a lot in our kitchen for smaller items such as palm sugar and garlic.

The limes were juiced by using a small hand-held lever citrus juicer (pictured below) which makes quick work of the limes, and keeps any pith or seed out of the juice.

Things to do differently next time: 

Not much that we would do differently next time - however the magazine does have a suggestion of using whole prawns instead of poultry.

Summary:
Taste  - This was a very tasty Thai influenced salad. My partner loves Asian flavours, so really enjoyed this meal, and even I devoured my serve as I found the salad delicious. My partner raved about this to his colleagues, and they wanted to try some. Luckily there are some leftover for him to take into work!
Ease  - Another easy salad recipe - by toasting the coconut on the stove, it is easier to keep an eye on it so you can remove it from the heat when it is all golden brown.
Time - Again, I am not sure I agree with the time given by the magazine. The picking of coriander and mint leaves took quite a bit of time, and by toasting the coconut on the stove, it required someone to watch over it. It is possible that if the oven was used, then more prep could have been done during that time. Again, if we didn't have such a gadget heavy kitchen we would have taken much longer with the prep.

Would I make it again?

Yes, although I wouldn't like to eat this too frequently as my preferred tastes lie in different directions. My partner would probably make this a bit of a staple over summer, when he likes to eat a lot of Asian inspired salads. This would also be a great meal to make use of leftover turkey roast after Christmas.