Thai Beef Salad
This is a great salad. It's fresh, light and packed with flavour. If you're feeling s little adventurous, and you want to go and find it, adding some raw vegetables to it like pea and apple eggplant, cabbage and snake beans, best found in Asian markets.
150gm piece of eye fillet or scotch fillet
Oyster sauce and sweet soy sauce
2 stems of spring onions, sliced thinly
1 Lebanese cucumber cut in half and sliced thinly lengthways
6 - 8 cherry tomatoes, halved
½ bunch mint
½ bunch coriander
1 stick of lemongrass sliced finely
1 red chilli, julienned
100gm crushed peanuts
2 tbsp roasted rice (optional)
For the dressing:
Juice of two limes
Fish sauce to taste
Sweet chilli sauce
Chilli powder - optional
2 tbsp white sugar
Rub beef with oyster and sweet soy, leave for around 10 mins then sear in a hot pan till medium rare or to your liking and rest. Mix remainder of salad ingredients together and set aside. Slice beef thinly and add to salad.
For the dressing, mix ingredients together in a bowl. The taste should be hot, sweet, salty, and sour. I have deliberately left the amounts up to you, as everyone has their own tastes.
Again, if you're preparing it for a next day, make sure you don't dress it till you need to eat it. It's the freshness of this salad, as with most, that is most important.
For the roasted rice, roast half a cup of glutinous rice in a dry pan over moderate heat till golden brown. Grind to a fine powder in a spice grinder, or a mortar and pestle. The rice gives it a unique texture, and will keep well in an airtight container. If you decide to use raw vegetables for a condiment, cut apple eggplant into ¼'s, break up cabbage, and cut snake beans into 2 cm lengths, whilst leaving pea eggplants whole. The raw vegetable provides a good balance to the dish. But you don't need them if you're taking to work.
Roast Kingfish with Strawberry and Almond Salad
Believe it or not, the flavour combinations in this salad work quite well. You could alternatively, poach the fish, in a light vegetable stock with aromatics.
1 180gm piece of kingfish or any firm white fleshed fish
Olive oil for cooking
¼ punnet strawberries, quartered
½ cup mint shredded
¼ cup dill tips
2 tbsp pine nuts toasted
100gm crumbled goat's cheese
1 cup watercress
¼ of a red onion finely sliced
1 spring onion finely sliced
1 tbsp black sesame seeds
Dressing:
30ml balsamic vinegar
50ml olive oil
Salt and pepper
Preheat an oven to 200°C. In a hot pan place Kingfish skin down and season with salt and pepper. Allow to brown slightly and place in oven. Cook for around 7 minutes, the turn over and leave in oven till cooked. Remove from oven and rest. Mix salad ingredients together. If you're taking to work the next day, keep fish separate so you can reheat. For poaching fish: Get a good quality vegetable stock, such as Campbell's stocks. Heat in a pot, and add a couple of bay leaves, a sprig of thyme, a shallot, some peppercorns and a little salt. Bring to the boil, and then simmer. Add fish and simmer till cooked through, but not falling apart.
If you wish you could flake the fish in this salad.
Scott draffin is the author of the Desk Job diet. A scientist common sense approach to dieting in the modern day office environment. http://www.thedeskjobdiet.com Scott has a master degree in science
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_P_Draffin
No comments:
Post a Comment