It might look complicated, but this tasty beef salad makes a delicious meal and is deceptively easy to make. One of my favourite recipes of all time, but beware – it’s spicy!! I can safely say that this will not appeal to you if you like your salads dressed with salad cream.
Ingredients
- Thin frying steak (sliced into thin slices). This can be substituted for prawns if desired.
- One or two red chilli peppers, minced
- Fresh ginger to taste, minced
- Two large cloves garlic, sliced crosswise very thin
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- Fish sauce
- Juice of a lime
- 1/2 a small cucumber (seeds removed), peeled and sliced
- One large tomato, cut into wedges
- A handful of button mushrooms
- 3 shallots, or 1 small onion, sliced very thin
- A nice bunch of coriander
- 1 pack Thai fragrant rice
Preheat a grill.
For each person to be served, take one cup of rice. Rinse well – this is really important! Now, add to a saucepan one and a half cups of water per person. Bring to the boil, add the rinsed rice, bring back to the boil, then down to a simmer and cover. Check the rice periodically while preparing the rest of the recipe to make sure it’s not sticking to the base of the pan. When all the water has gone, remove from the heat but leave covered.
While the rice cooks, mix together the garlic, ginger, fish sauce, chilli, lime juice and sugar in a bowl. That’s your salad dressing. Told you it was simple!
Add the shallots, tomato and cucumber, stir well and cover.
Fry the beef/prawns in a pan. Allow to cool and add to the salad. Stir well again.
By now, you should have a pan of cooked rice with a really sticky consistency and all the water should have been soaked up by the rice. Take a rolling pin and pound the rice for a 30 seconds – this will break up the starches in the rice in readiness for the next step, which is to spread the rice over a baking sheet. Place it under the preheated grill until it starts to crisp. Break into lumps and serve with the salad.