Chilli Beef Salad

Boy...that was a long break. It wasn't meant to be, but time just gets away from you sometimes. On the plus side, I've now finished uni forever and hopefully will have a little more time. Given the heatwave in Melbourne of late, I've been eating a lot of south-east Asian cold dishes. This is the most recent, a beef salad rather liberally adapted from Donna Hay's Off The Shelf (which might I add, is an awesome cookbook and one of my most used). This recipe uses Thai chilli paste, which is chilli in soybean oil (and sometimes named as such) with other ingredients like shrimp, ginger, tamarind etc. You can find this at Asian grocers - Great Eastern on Lonsdale St (near the corner of Little Bourke) is my favorite. Chilli Beef Salad Serves 4 Ingredients:

• 1 tbls peanut oil
• 600 g rump steak, sliced into bite-sized strips
• 2-3 tbls Thai chilli paste
• 6 kaffir lime leaves, shredded
• 2 chillies, sliced (optional)
• 2 tbls lime juice
• 1 tbls brown sugar
• half a cos lettuce (or more, as liked) leaves torn into pieces
• small punnet cherry/grape tomatoes
• red capsicum, sliced into thin strips
• 1/2 cup coriander leaves
• 1/4 cup mint leaves
• 1/2 cup chopped (or not) roasted unsalted peanuts

Method:

1. Heat oil in a fry pan/wok over high heat. Add beef, fry for a few minutes until browned. Add chilli paste, lime leaves chillies and sugar and cook while stirring for a minute or so until sauce combined. Remove from heat.
2. Combine lettuce, tomatoes, capsicum and herbs in a bowl. Add beef and stir through so sauce coats the vegetables.
3. Serve topped with peanuts.