Vegan conch salad
This Bahamian vegan conch salad replaces the traditional conch with young coconut to achieve a similar texture using Bahamian ingredients.
Servings 1 large
Ingredients
- 220 g Tomato
- 90 g Green bell pepper
- 70 g Onion
- 200 g young coconut see note
- Scotch bonnet to taste
- 3 tbsp fresh lime juice
- 3 tbsp bitter orange juice see note
- salt to taste ~½ tsp
Instructions
- Prepare the young coconut if needed. See note.
- Chop all the vegetables finely: tomatoes and bell pepper to ~5 mm cubes, onion down to ~3 mm cubes. Transfer to a bowl
- Chop the young coconut into ~5 mm pieces. Add to bowl.
- If using: finely chop as much habanero as you like. Transfer to the bowl.
- Add salt to taste, ~½ tsp.
- Squeeze the limes and bitter oranges, adding their juice to the salad. You need a lot of juice, ~3 tbsp of each.
- Serve straight away, either as a standalone dish or as a side. Or pack it up and bring on an outing to the beach.The vegan conch-less salad keeps in the fridge for 1-2 days.
Notes
Young coconut: Sometimes you can find young coconut fresh and cut it open and scrape out the tender flesh. You can also find shredded young coconut in the frozen section in some stores. For this dish, I found some in the freezer at my local Chinese store. The bag said to heat the coconut flesh to 75 °C so I did before letting it cool down again. (Most likely a bacterial safety concern.)
Bitter orange: bitter orange can also be hard to find. Here I substituted it for blood orange. If your orange is very sweet, use a little less of orange juice and a bit more of lime juice.