If you invite me to a potluck, there’s a 90% chance I’m bringing a salad.

It started at my husband’s request, when he would be on one of his cut diets and needed something that wouldn’t throw off his macronutrient split. Then I showed up at a friend’s bridal shower with a riff of this kale and quinoa salad from , causing a minor ruckus when her titas fought for the leftovers. A decade of salad-making later, I’m starting to think I should bring printouts in advance, eliminating my need to email or text the recipe afterwards.

But like most second-generation immigrants, I’m more comfortable making every other cuisine than my own, citing a long list of limiting beliefs I’m slowly chipping away at. The ingredients are hard to source at the regular grocery store. The prep time is too long. People might call my recipes inauthentic (whatever that means), or turn up their nose at the funk of fish sauce.

So whenever I’m cooking for a tough crowd, I’m diligent in my research process—drawing from what I’ve eaten at restaurants, cookbooks, and cooking shows in Vietnamese. Then I scour my usual grocery stores, making substitutions based on taste and texture. That’s how I threw together this pomelo salad for a family gathering of my childhood best friend’s, enjoying my aunties’ looks of disbelief when I tell them they ate spiralized zucchini and carrots dressed in fish sauce, snickering with glee as they went back for seconds—and thirds—until the platter was empty.

Mission accomplished.

Celebration Pomelo Salad

Get the printable recipe here

Serves 6-8 as a side dish

Ever come across a pomelo at the grocery store and not know what to do with it? Buy one and make this salad for your next potluck! Note the hour plus prep time—still dreaming up a weeknight friendly version. Stay tuned!

Adapted from Vietnamese by Uyen Luu; presentation inspired by Cây Cau, a restaurant in Hanoi.

For the Vinaigrette

⅓ cup rice wine vinegar
⅓ cup good quality fish sauce (I like Red Boat)
¼ cup maple syrup
4 cloves of garlic, minced

For the Salad

1 lb. fresh king prawns, heads removed
8 oz. boneless, skinless chicken thighs (Optional)
1 large green or yellow pomelo
2 large green zucchini, spiralized with a julienne peeler
3 medium carrots, peeled and spiralized with a julienne peeler
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and julienned
½ cup freshly snipped herbs, like Thai basil, cilantro, or mint
¼ cup roasted and salted cashews, crushed
Pomegranate arils, for serving

Instructions

Cook the shrimp. To prepare the shrimp, bring a pot of water to a boil. Add the shrimp and stir until they turn pink—about 2-3 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water. Set aside to cool.
(Optional) Roast the chicken thighs. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Line a large sheet pan with parchment paper, and lay your chicken thighs on top. Spray or rub with olive oil (Optional as the chicken does have fat), and season with salt and pepper. Roast until the juices run clear, or 25-30 minutes. Set aside to cool.
Prepare the green pomelo. Start by using a sharp knife to trim off the bottom of the fruit—this will create a secure base. Then make shallow cuts in the middle of the peel, criss-crossing until you get to the other side. Finally, separate the peel from the thick white pith, taking care to keep the rind intact. Set aside. Finally, using your hands and a paring knife, separate the white pith from the pink pomelo segments. If you feel compelled, chop them into smaller pieces (I find this doesn’t matter, as they break up apart during the mixing process.) Set aside.
Make the vinaigrette. In a small bowl, whisk together the rice wine vinegar, fish sauce, and maple syrup. Set aside.
Prep the prawns. Remove the peel and tail from each. Then, use a paring knife split into halves. Use the tip of your knife to remove the dark vein running across the back of the shrimp. Set aside.
Prep the chicken. When cool enough to handle, slice the meat into ¼ inch thick pieces. Set aside.
When ready to serve, prepare the salad. In a large bowl, mix together the pomelo segments, zucchini, carrots, apples, half of the herbs and prawns, and optional chicken. Drizzle in half of the dressing and mix. Taste, adding more dressing until the flavor is to your liking. You may not need it all.
Plate the salad. Start by filling up the pomelo peel, before scattering the remainder on a large platter. Sprinkle the nuts on top, and garnish with the pomegranate arils and remaining chopped herbs.

Notes

For a vegetarian version, omit the shrimp and chicken. Substitute the vinaigrette for ¼ cup Braggs liquid aminos, 2-3 TB rice wine vinegar, and 1 tsp. toasted sesame oil.
Feel free to swap the zucchini and carrots for other vegetables, like daikon radish, green papaya, kohlrabi, or shredded red cabbage.
If you don’t have a julienne peeler, don’t worry—a regular vegetable peeler to make thick ribbons would work great.

WRITE 👩🏻‍💻

Thanks to my writing retreat, I got three uninterrupted days to revise the first twelve chapters of my manuscript. The bad news: I discovered I prefer the hustle and bustle of a city, or at least a walkable central part of town for this stage of writing. The isolation would have been perfect if I were dealing with line edits. But after 24 hours, I quickly realized that discipline isn’t my problem; that my best plot ideas come from observing people and how they interact with the world.

Still glad I booked a cabin in the woods, but my next writing retreat will be in a place where I can wander on foot a little more easily.

LIFE 🛟

As a mother who exclusively nursed for two years, it’s hard to shake the fear that my kid will wither away in the absence of my breasts—especially when she refused to take the bottle of milk I painstakingly pumped so I could go to a concert, requiring my husband to syringe the contents into her mouth 💉.

Thankfully, kids become a little more independent with each passing day. So even though my daughter Facetime’d me twice a day while I was away, I’m so thankful she got the chance to bond with my husband one-on-one. Now her favorite thing to do is hang out in the gym during his workouts and play with his chalk 🏋️‍♂️

BALANCE 🧘🏻‍♀️

I think it’s tempting to thumb through a book on writing, and think you’re doing something wrong if you don’t finish a manuscript in 90 days, or three drafts, or whatever outcome the author is selling. It’s especially awkward when you finally tell your mom you’ve been writing a book for the last two years, and the first question out of her mouth is, “Is it done?”, which opens up a dialogue about how writing is not just pounding on a keyboard, but unlocking the universe you’ve created in your head through whatever means necessary—meditation, yoga, walks, inspiration showers, locking yourself in a cabin in the woods 😬

So as someone who shifted genres and is s-l-o-w-l-y working her way through rewrite #4, I’m inspired by writers like , who graciously shared her story of how it took three rewrites to land a book deal with Disney-Hyperion. A reminder that the best ideas are the ones you iterate on over and over, and that the only race you’re running is with yourself.

💡 Know of someone who could use this reminder? Hit the button below to share the post

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CURRENTLY READING 📚

Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan. So much more than a second-chance romance novel! College sweethearts Josiah and Yasmen deal with grief, mental health, and how even with the right person and an upper-class lifestyle, a relationship can fracture after a family tragedy. I especially appreciate Josiah’s inner dialogue about status symbols and how they don’t always equate to a happy family life:

Yasmen’s Acura MDX sits prettily beside my Range Rover in our garage, in our elite zip code, and it should be the stuff of our dreams. But it’s instead a deep freezer, stuffed with metal monsters whose headlights glare at our inadequacies and scowl at how naïve we were to think this would ever be enough.

CURRENTLY STREAMING ⏯

The Affair on Showtime. If you love relationship drama, dual perspectives (memory bias included), and feel like escaping to a small resort town, this is the show for you. I especially enjoy the interactions between schoolteacher/first-time author Noah and his pompous father-in-law, who dispenses unsolicited advice on what it takes to be a multi-bestselling novelist:

Everyone’s got a first book in them. Most don’t have a second.

CURRENTLY COOKING 👩🏻‍🍳

This burnt eggplant and tomato tahini dip from Ottolenghi Test Kitchen. I used the broiler to char my eggplant; swapped the pine nuts for crisped-in-oil chickpeas; and topped with dollops of salted coconut yogurt and basil instead of tahini and dill. No judgment if you take a shortcut with store-bought marinara sauce—I was lucky to have extra homemade pasta sauce lingering in my fridge. The perfect accompaniment to pita bread for girls night or a single lady dinner (though my husband may have sneaked a dollop on his ground turkey/rice/broccoli concoction).

Cheers,

Sophia :)

P.S. What Vietnamese recipes are you dying to know how to cook at home? Leave me a comment and let me know.

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