Thai Beef Salad

It's not even Summer yet and we've already had some sizzling weather on the East Coast. When the weather is warm and I don't want to spend a lot of time fussing with dinner, I resort to gazpacho and salads so I can stay out of a hot kitchen. When I got word of the Keystone Beef recipe contest in honor of National Beef Month, I knew a quick salad was the way to go. It helped that the rules require the dish be made in 30 minutes or less, but that was going to happen anyway because the main ingredient was pre-cooked meat. Yeah yeah, I see you wrinkling your nose at the thought of canned, pre-cooked, beef. I felt the same way, but then I tasted Mr Minx's Emergency Chili made with the same product, and realized that canned beef isn't all that different from canned tuna. It's convenient and tasty and cuts down on cooking time in a big way.

This dish cooks for about 12 minutes, and chopping takes maybe another 10, but the flavor payoff makes it seem like it took much longer. I served the salad over a pile of baby spinach and arugula, but you can scoop it into cups of lettuce, if you'd like, or even eat it over rice or pasta.

Thai Beef Salad

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 clove garlic, minced
2 teaspoons sambal oelek
1 can Keystone beef, drained
Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved, quartered if large
1 medium carrot, peeled and cut into matchsticks
2 scallions, chopped
Salt to taste
Handful of torn mint leaves
Handful of cilantro
French fried onions
Fresh greens of your choice

Combine the lime juice, fish sauce, brown sugar, garlic, and sambal in a bowl. Place the beef in a sauce pan and warm over medium heat. Stir in the sauce. Cook for ten minutes. Add the tomatoes, carrot, and scallions and stir. Cook an additional minute or two. Taste for seasoning and add salt, if necessary. Stir in most of the mint and cilantro, leaving a few pieces for garnish.

Serve the beef warm or at room temperature over a pile of greens. Garnish with leftover mint and cilantro and some of the french fried onions.

Serves 3-4 as an appetizer or two as a main dish.

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Thai Bolognese

In a three day period, Mr Minx and I dined at Bobby Flay's new restaurant, Gato, had a 7-course lunch at Le Bernardin, another multi-course lunch at Ma Peche, and dinner at Harold Dieterle's Kin Shop. With all of that good food behind us, it was hard to come home to a fridge full of nothing. Right away we went to the grocery store to stock up on fresh veggies and dinner fixins. I figured a spicy Asian-style meal would be a good segue from fancy NY food to home cooking, and the first night home whipped up a pasta sauce that was part laab, part Bolognese.

I wanted to use ground pork, but the store we visited had none. Instead, I used ground turkey and made sure to season it well to get rid of, well, the turkey flavor. There's always an assortment of Asian condiments in the fridge (miso, gochujang, hoisin, chili bean paste) so I combined my favorite Thai chilli with basil paste and red curry paste, plus lots of fish sauce, lime juice, and coconut milk powder to make a richly flavored yet light sauce. You could use liquid coconut milk, but I find it doesn't keep well if you don't use the whole can right away. Instead, I always have packets of dried coconut milk so I can use a little or a lot and then store the rest in a zip-top bag in the cupboard.

While the dish wasn't Kin Shop-worthy, it was still pretty darn delicious.

Thai "Bolognese" Sauce

1/2 large onion, chopped
Vegetable oil
The innermost leaves of 1 stalk of lemongrass, bashed with the side of a knife and minced
1 lb ground turkey or pork
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tablespoon Thai chilli basil paste (Maesri brand)
1 tablespoon red curry paste (Thai Kitchen)
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
4 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons coconut powder
1/4 cup water
Juice of half a lime
1 teaspoon superfine sugar
Chopped cilantro
Thai basil
Chopped scallions
Fresh mint

Cook onion in vegetable oil over medium high heat until translucent. Add lemongrass and ground meat, breaking up meat with wooden spoon. Cook, stirring constantly, until meat is mostly cooked through and beginning to brown. Stir in garlic, chilli basil and red curry pastes, and 1 tablespoon of the fish sauce.

Combine the coconut powder, water, and lime juice in a bowl. Pour over meat mixture in pan and stir well. Add sugar and remaining fish sauce. Turn heat to low. Cook mixture until ground meat doesn't taste strongly of turkey or pork but has taken on the flavors of the pastes and fish sauce, 5-10 minutes.

Serve over pasta or rice, garnished with plenty of fresh herbs and scallions. Alternately, you can chill the mixture and eat it like laab (Thai ground meat salad), rolled in fresh lettuce leaves.

Serves 4-6.



Posted on Minxeats.com.