Thai Beef Salad (Yum Nua)

I envy my sister in law. She has been to Thailand a few times and took a cooking class once where she learned how to carve pretty vegetable flowers. That is high on my to do list! Luckily she brought me some Thai food greeting cards. They have amazing recipes printed on the back with a pretty picture of the food in question on the front. I use them frequently, and one of them has become one of our signature dishes. Spicy beef salad, or Yum Nua. It is a very easy dish and pretty adaptable. 

As the amazing-but-sometimes-impossible David Thompson always says in his Thai Food bible this dish should taste equally salty, sour, sweet, spicy and umami. Give it a go, it won’t fail. You can serve it with either noodles or rice or a nice baguette, whatever you like.

Yum Nua
Spicy Beef salad

---

Ingredients

400 g of beef tenderloin (we used ostrich steak today)
0,25 cup sugar
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
2 cloves garlic
6 fresh coriander leaves (and more for garnish)
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper
2 spring onions
6 fresh red chillies (:-D it IS Thai food, we usually use 1…)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
lettuce leaves (we used red bell pepper today)   

Method
1. Grill the beef until medium rare, or as preferred, and cut into thin slices.
2. Pound together the garlic, soy sauce, sugar, lime juice, chopped coriander leaves, spring onions (thinly sliced), salt and ground black pepper.
3. Heat the oil in a saucepan and stir fry the spice paste for 3-4 minutes.
4. Combine the beef and cook for a minute.
5. Remove the beef and allow to cool.
6. Before serving, sprinkle the chillies (thinly sliced) on top and garnish with the remaining coriander leaves.