Saturday, August 07, 2010

Thai Beef Salad/Yam Neua


Friday 23 July

I can't find this anywhere on the blog, and I cannot believe that we have not made this for the past five years. So I will just guess that we HAVE, but just for lunch. It is what we do when we have just a few toothsome strips of steak left over from a previous meal (say, Wednesday's - and yes, we did have to scrape some gorgonzola butter off them).

We use the recipe from Jennifer Brennan's Original Thai Cookbook - the one with the hot pink cover.

So first, make the dressing. In a food processor, whiz up the following:

2 cloves garlic with a little salt to soak up the juice; then

EITHER 2 green serrano chiles (seeds and ribs scraped out) OR 1/4 tsp. of the chili sambal that we call Malaysian Death Sauce

the bottom third of a stalk of fresh (actually, we freeze it) lemon grass

4 mint leaves

4 coriander leaves

1/2 Tbsp. Nam Pla (Thai fish sauce)

1 Tbsp. lime juice

1 tsp. sugar

1/4 tsp crushed red chili flakes

Pile up the following decoratively on a plate:

lettuce leaves (preferably several colors and textures)

thin-sliced sweet or red onion

thin-sliced cucumber or zucchini

more fresh coriander leaves

- or bell peppers or radishes or cherry tomatoes or whatever your heart desires.

Pile the steak decoratively on top, and pour the dressing over.

It's a summer breeze, but with a fiery hint of chile.

No comments: