I recently mentioned Emma Knowles' Vietnamese Prawn Salad recipe which was posted at Gourmet Traveller.

I made it for dinner last night, with a few changes to reduce the calorie content.

Firstly, I used snow peas instead of snake beans, because the snow peas looked great at the local greengrocer whereas the beans looked a bit tired.

To cut down the fat I didn't fry the prawns - I bought extra-large boiled prawns to go with the cold salad. I just peeled and de-veined them (leaving the tails on). I used more prawns than the recipe specified - prawns are low-cal and low-fat and 4 per person just didn't seem enough.

Coles now stocks palm sugar in my local supermarket (in the asian foods aisle, right on the top shelf) but you can use brown sugar instead.

If you like the look of this, you can click through to get the recipe for Vietnamese Prawn Salad.

Leftovers magic:

While I was fiddling about with the vermicelli and prawns I also peeled some prawns completely and wrapped them into some rice paper rolls with finely sliced cucumber, cooked and rinced vermicelli, coriander, vietnamese mint and thai basil. They were delicious eaten immediately, dipped into hoisin sauce.

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