Minted Beef and Noodle Salad

With the Chinese New Year ante portas (my Latin), we thought going a bit Asian would be wise choice. Our first one was Vietnamese Minted Beef and Noodle Salad.



I hope we will not be roasted on bamboo sticks for mixing Vietnamese Food with a Chinese festival. Things are even more complicated: The recipe came from New Zealand. Mickle in NZ sent it to me a few weeks ago. Here it is:

For 1 serving:
100 grams lean minced beef
1 tablespoon fish sauce
crushed or chopped garlic
finely chopped ginger
1 tablespoon finely chopped mint
¾ teaspoon curry powder
¼ teaspoon chilli powder
finely chopped red chilli (for chilli lovers)

Mix the ingredients listed above together and leave for at least ½ an hour if you can. Is okay to prepare it and then refrigerate for several hours or even overnight.

Next prepare the vegetables and noodles: About 100 grams fine rice noodles, prepared according to the manufacturers instructions

A piece of Daikon radish, chopped
A piece of cucumber, chopped
Handful of bean sprouts
1 lettuce leaf, sliced

To cook: Heat a large pan or wok and add a little vegetable oil. Add the meat mixture, breaking it up as much as you can, and cook until browned. Add the drained noodles and the vegetables and heat through. There will be liquid in the bottom of the pan. It is supposed to be like that. Garnish with your choice of chopped nuts, more fish sauce, more mint, fresh coriander.

As my guru says: Reframe!. Well. Michelle did the same. Here are her notes:

I've also made this using chopped up lamb steak, I just added a splosh of cooking oil to the meat mixture when I prepared it. I use grapeseed or olive oil - just use whatever oil you normally cook with.

Mint - traditionally made with Vietnamese mint which I don't like and is hard to find. Excellent made with Thai basil and/or with plain ordinary mint.

One daikon radish is way too big for me to get through. I just use ordinary red radishes.

Alter the vegetables to your taste. I didn't have any bean sprouts tonight. I added sliced celery and used chopped fresh spinach instead of lettuce. Would also be nice with fresh rocket added. I add the leafy green vegetable last and heat it all until the leafy green is just wilting. I've also used mushrooms sometimes.

Alter the amount of the spices and seasonings to suit yourself. I love fish sauce so add it generously. I loath fresh coriander and can have problems with nuts, so I avoid these. Instead of curry powder you could use tumeric, ground coriander (which I do like) and ground cumin, or whatever you like. I like Thai basil and mint so often add more than in the recipe.

Sometimes I use bean thread noodles instead of the rice ones. Would also be nice made without any noodles and served with rice.

Well, we did not stop there and continued the theme with fish on a bed of vegetables. It's not really Asian, but it looks kind of like.



Gong Xi Fa Chai