Raw Pad Thai

Nutritional therapist Holly Sugars of Food Envy shares her recipe for this favourite spicy Thai dish with a super healthy twist to get your New Year off to a great start.

Ingredients

• Pad Thai Dressing
• 1 cup cashew nut butter (any nut butter will do, but Holly prefers cashew for this)
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp brown rice vinegar
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 red chilli, seeds removed
• Large handful coriander stalks
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 stump peeled ginger
• 2-4 tbsp water
• Raw Pad Thai
• 1 medium courgette
• 1 medium carrot
• 1/2 an orange pepper
• 1/2 a yellow pepper
• Generous handful edamame beans
• 1 bunch spring onions
• Finely chopped ginger
• A few fresh coriander leaves
• Sliced red chilli, to taste

Preparation

1. For the Pad Thai Dressing, blend all the ingredients for the dressing together to make a thick, scrumptious sauce. Add the water sparingly, to achieve the consistency you want for your sauce, bearing in mind that it's going to coat the vegetables later, so you don’t want it too thick.
2. Taste once you’ve blitzed it, as you might want to alter it to suit your exacting taste buds!
3. For the Raw Pad Thai, I normally use my sprializer to prepare the vegetables, but if you haven’t got one a peeler works just as well to make these vegetables into noodle shapes.
4. Simply top and tail the courgette and carrot, and then using the peeler, start at one end and peel a nice long thin strip the length of your vegetable.
5. Thinly slice the peppers and finely chop the spring onion and ginger.
6. Mix all of the vegetables together in a large bowl, top with a good dollop of the sauce, fresh coriander leaves and chilli to suit your taste buds.
7. If you want to make it more substantial, try mixing in brown rice noodles or brown basmati rice and even adding a some grilled chicken or prawns. Any vegetables will work with this, so don’t feel that you have to stick to the list. Things that work equally as well are cabbage, green beans, sugar snap peas, red cabbage, beansprouts, red onion, cucumber, pak choi and even lettuce.