Just Added a Post on the Large Queens to the Canadian Philatelic Blog and Wickedly Awesome Thai Beef Salad

I just finished writing an extensive post dealing with the Large Queens Issue on my sister blog, Canadian Philately. Click on the following link to read it:

http://canadianphilately.blogspot.ca/

I made a wicked Thai beef salad last night and just had to share the recipe. This recipe makes enough salad for three people and this is good enough to stand on its own as an entire meal. You will need:

4 or 5 mechanically tenderized hip steak fillets.
1 bunch of raddishes
1 bunch of cilantro
1 bunch of fresh mint
3 bunches of watercress, or 1 small tub of baby spinach coarsely chopped.
2 tablespoons of finely shredded lemon zest

for the dressing:

3 tablespoons fish sauce
1/2 cup of lime juice (you will need 9-12 limes to get 1/2 cup)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1.5 teaspoons sugar
salt and pepper to taste.

The food processor is invaluable for this recipe, as the radishes need to be sliced thin and this could take a while if you are trying to do it by hand.

Slice the raddishes, coarsely chop the watercress or spinach, the mint and cilantro and combine all in a large salad bowl. To get the lemon zest, I took a vegetable peeler and useed it to peel a lemon. Then I finely sliced the peelings lenghwise. That gave me the 2 tablespoons that I needed. Place that in the bowl.

Lightly salt the steaks and heat 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a good quality skillet (cast iron would be best) until it is almost, but not quite smoking. Then place one cutlet in the pan for about 20-30 seconds and then turn over for another 20-30 seconds. Take out of the pan and place on a plate. Repeat for all the other cutlets. They should be rare and seared on the outside when you remove them from the heat. This is very important because they will be tough if you overcook them. They will continue to cook after you have taken them off the heat, as you will see later. Let them cool and make the dressing while you are waiting by whisking the ingredients together in a bowl.

When the beef has cooled, you will notice that all the blood has run out of the meat onto the plate. Remove the cutlets to a cutting board and slice them crosswise into 1/2 inch strips. As you slice you will see that they are now mostly medium-rare, which is what you want - it will soak up the dressing, won't be tough to chew and the bacteria is fully killed by both the heat and the citrus based dressing.

Add the sliced beef and dressing to the bowl, toss and serve at once.

The original recipe for this called for beef tenderloin and called for it to be boiled, which seemed to me to be a terrible waste of a very expensive cut. Using the tenderized hip steaks above is much cheaper and in my opinion gives a better result than would have been obtained with the tenderloin.

A fantastic meal for under 20 bucks.