This Week's Recipe: Thai Beef Salad

This week’s Recipe: Thai Beef Salad

Why Thai Beef Salad?

To my brother-in-law’s endless requests here (finally) is my recipe for Thai beef salad.

This is a favourite amongst my family and is an easy meal to put together, especially if you have a lot of mouths to feed and don’t want to slave away in the kitchen.

This recipe is adapted from a Bathers Pavilion cookbook. I found it while in London and felt it humbling. It may not be an ‘Australian’ recipe but it reminded me of Australia’s multiculturalism and how much it is a part of our country.

What I also loved was that I found this simple recipe in a somewhat upper market cookbook; it just goes to show that if something tastes great it simply is great.

Ingredients:
2 garlic cloves, minced (I do this on a micro plane grater)
1 fresh red chilli, finely chopped (I find it easiest to also grate it on the micro plane)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons lime juice (1 large lime or 2 small ones)
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons palm sugar or brown sugar

500g beef fillet or a good quality steak
12 ripe cherry tomatoes, halved
1 red capsicum, cored, seeded and cut into strips
1 Spanish onion, very finely sliced
1 handful of fresh mint, leaves picked
1 handful of fresh coriander, leaves picked
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
6 tablespoons roasted unsalted peanuts

Method
For the dressing; place garlic, chilli, soy sauce, lime juice, fish sauce and sugar in a bowl and whisk until sugar is dissolved.

Place the tomatoes, capsicum, onion, peanuts and herbs in a bowl.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Season the meat with salt and pepper and cook on each side for 2-4 minutes depending on how thick the meat is and how well done you want it to be cooked. (I prefer it to be medium rare and sliced very thinly.)

Take the meat off the heat and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Slice as thinly as possible and place in the salad. Pour over the dressing and toss well.

To serve, sprinkle with a few more peanuts. If you want make this more of a substantial meal simply add some cold cooked rice noodles cooked according to packed instructions. I serve it with crusty bread to soak up the dressing in the bottom of the bowls.

Serves 4

This week’s Recipe: Banana Bread

Why Banana Bread?

This is the first recipe that I cooked myself as a child. I clearly remember finding this recipe while looking through cookbooks (yes even at that young age I have to confess that I would sit for hours reading recipe after recipe) while my mum and brother were out. I remember weighing all the ingredients, mixing the batter, baking the bread and even washing up all before my family got home.

I knew from that day on that I had discovered my love for cooking and the rest is history.

This recipe is also fantastic if you are a fussy banana eater like me. If the banana is slightly bruised or has a few dark spots on the skin I wont eat it. This can tend to be a problem that is now easily solved. I simply put the bananas in the freezer skin and all. When I have enough I simply defrost them and make banana bread.

Ingredients
110g butter, soft
200g caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
285g (2 level cups) self- raising flour
4 ripe bananas, mashed

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease a 13cm by 25cm loaf tin and dust with flour.
Meanwhile cream the butter and sugar together until light in colour. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well. Fold in the flour and mashed banana alternately. Mix until all ingredients are incorporated.

Spoon the mixture into the tin and bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. If the top of the bread gets too dark cover it with foil and continue to bake.

Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes and turn out onto a wire rack to continue to cool.

Serve sliced toasted or plain with butter.