Asian Beef Salad

IMG_1284

Another foray into the magazine archives and something I was quite excited to come across.

This time, it’s the July 2001 issue of Food and Travel. The Swift Suppers section features recipes from Vatch’s Southeast Asian Salads: 6 salads from all over south east Asia.

I needed to work with what I knew to be readily available so I ended up combining two of the recipes: the Vietnamese grilled beef salad and a Burmese salad, thoke. Now, a quick google of thoke will bring up lots of recipes that are all completely different from what follows. What I liked about this salad was that it was different. Here in Adelaide we’re fast approaching BBQ season and mostly the repertoire of salads is pretty limited, so I like to keep an eye out for recipes that are quick to put together but that also represent a departure from a bit of lettuce, cucumber and tomato.

Let’s begin with the beef. Make a marinade by whisking together 5 tbsp of lime juice, 4 tbsp of fish sauce and 2 tbsp of sugar. Whisk until the sugar is dissolved. For a change, I actually followed these proportions because I do appreciate that in this type of food getting the salty/sweet/sour/hot balance correct is important! Once the sugar is dissolved stir in two young lemon grass stalks, very finely sliced and some finely sliced chilli. I used one small fataali chilli. As this marinade won’t be cooked, don’t be tempted to substitute chilli flakes – fresh will be much better.

Leave the marinade to stand until you need it.

When you’re ready to eat, take a piece of rump steak (approximately 500g) and cook it on a hot grill (or BBQ, or just in a hot pan) for only a minute or two on each side. You want plenty of colour on the meat but typically you want the meat nice and rare. (If you really can’t stand that idea, cook the meat to your liking). When the meat is cooked, remove from the pan, slice thinly and toss through the marinade, ensuring it’s well coated.

Leave the meat in its marinade for at least 30 minutes.

Traditionally, the meat would be served up on a salad of beansprouts, basil, mint and salad leaves. However, I knew I wouldn’t be able to track down the requisite quantities of basil and mint so I ended up tossing the meat (and marinade) through some vermicelli noodles. Tasty, but somewhat anaemic looking! Next time I’ll make the effort to put together the appropriate salad.

The thoke was easy to make: finely slice some white cabbage and cut some carrot and cucumber into fine matchsticks. Mix them together in a bowl and toss through some beansprouts.

Heat a little oil in a fry pan and fry a couple of thinly sliced garlic cloves until crisp (keep an eye on them – you want them golden but not burnt!). Drain the garlic and add to your vegetables. Finely slice half an onion and fry in the same oil until crisp, then add to the vegetables.

Sprinkle the salad with 1/2 tsp of turmeric, some chilli powder (to taste), a little salt and a very generous squeeze (or two) of lime juice. Toss everything together (you want that chilli powder to be evenly distributed) and serve.

This was really delicious – incredibly easy to make, and very fresh, crunchy and (dare I say it?) healthy. Next time you’re asked to bring a salad, give thoke a go!

Crispy Parmesan Pork

Crispy parmesan pork

Apologies for the colour issues in this photo! I’ll stop taking pictures with a camera phone!

Another foray into a rogue cooking magazine, another quick supper.

This time it’s the April 2011 UK Delicious, brought as a present by my best mate when she visited for a couple of weeks earlier in the year. The recipe comes from the “Shortcut suppers” section, which makes use of various store cupboard standbys and ready made bits and pieces.

This recipe is so simple I’d suggest that only the laziest of cooks would need to resort to store bought mash or sauce.

Now, the recipe calls for “pork loin medallions”. I wasn’t sure what this translated to in Australian (although I have found Australian recipes using the same terminology), but my butcher sells what he calls “pork schnitzels” which are vaguely round, reasonable thin pieces of pork (they’ve not been put through the tenderiser or crumbed). Basically, you’re looking for a piece of meat that will cook quickly, that is lean and is without bone.

To cook the pork, dip the medallions in egg and then crumb with a mixture of breadcrumbs, finely grated parmesan cheese, pepper and herb of your choice (sage, thyme or oregano will all work well). Pan fry (in plenty of hot oil) until cooked and the topping is golden and crispy.

Remove the meat from the pan and keep warm.

As there’s no Waitrose for any of us to nip to for the cider and mustard sauce you have to make your own. Fortunately, this isn’t difficult: remove the pork from the pan and deglaze with either dry cider or white wine. Add a teaspoon of grainy or Dijon mustard (I prefer grainy, as I find Dijon can be a little too vinaigery), stir well and finish with some cream. Allow it to thicken a little and … sauce done!

Serve with a quick colcannon. In advance, pan fry a finely sliced leek and some finely sliced white cabbage until soft. Make mash your usual way and mix through the greens. This is great way of making mash a bit more interesting, as well as getting a few extra veggies on your plate.

All too easy and this makes an interesting meal out of relatively simple ingredients. Just remembering to add some parmesan cheese to breadcrumbs is enough to jazz up pretty much anything you end up crumbing in future!

Chicken and Green Onion Fried Rice

chicken & green onion rice

I’ve recently had a shuffle around of my cookery magazine collection which has been a great opportunity to try out some new recipes. Looking for something relatively quick for a mid week supper, I came across this recipe in the March 2003 Australian Gourmet Traveller.

This is really a slightly glorified fried rice dish but, as is always the case with these things, it’s a pleasant change to follow a recipe and not dump absolutely everything from the spice drawer in the dish!

I adapted the method a little, so that I could prep the chicken in advance and, when it came time to eat, I just cooked the rice and dealt with the vegetables.

Begin by making the marinade for the chicken. In a pan, heat some peanut oil (any flavourless oil will do) and half an onion, thinly sliced. Cook until the onion is soft. Then add some chicken stock. Now, following the recipe, this would be 50mL of chicken stock. However, we have a tendency to buy stock in the 1L containers and not use it which is rather wasteful so instead I bought some sachets of stock paste and I just used one sachet.

Add your chicken stock of choice, followed by a generous teaspoon of ginger paste, chilli to taste (I used chilli flakes, but finely sliced fresh chilli would be lovely), 50mL of white wine vinegar, 1 tsp of caster sugar and ⅛ cup of soy sauce (this is about 30mL, if you prefer). Give this all a stir and bring to the boil. Once boiling, remove from the heat and allow to cool.

There are two approaches to cooking the chicken. I pan fried my chicken breast in one piece which I think was a mistake because it was so huge. Being huge, it was also very uneven in thickness. Of course, had a chopped it into bite size chunks first, I’d have run the risk of over cooking the chunks. So it’s up to you – season your chicken breast and pan fry until cooked and golden. This is the only bit where the chicken gets cooked so you do need to make sure it’s done properly.

Once the chicken is cooked, if it’s in one piece, allow to cool for a few minutes before chopping into bite size chunks. Add the chicken to the onion marinade, coat well and allow to stand for at least an hour.

When you’re ready to eat, cook your rice. Heat a little oil in a wok and fry coarsely sliced spring onions (a whole bunch). As the spring onions start to take on some colour, add the leaves from two bok choy and fry until they start to wilt. Finish by adding the chicken and onion mixture (include the marinade) and mix through the rice.

Ensure everything is hot and serve.

This was great – perfect food as the weather starts changing (in either hemisphere). You may need to adjust the sugar/vinegar balance. I’m naturally very miserly with sugar in recipes and Andy felt that a touch extra sugar would have helped balance out the tartness of the vinegar much better. I’m inclined to agree and so I suggest that you taste the marinade and adjust as you see fit.

To drink – serve with Riesling. If you’ve been generous with the chilli a slightly off dry Riesling would be perfect. My current favourite is the Greywacke, from New Zealand.