Thai Beef Salad or Waterfall Beef

One of my all time favorite dishes – ever – is Thai beef salad. I make it at home often and I order it in Thai restaurants whenever I have the opportunity to go. My mother makes the best beef salad but I do the best I can.

Disclaimer – if you are a vegetarian, this is definitely not the dish for you.

To make it truly authentic, you will need to make the ground rice. This can be done in one big batch and stored for later use. That being said, I make this dish many times without it. It can be time consuming and I’ll skip if I’m desperate and in a hurry. That being said, please know that it does add quite a bit of authenticity to the salad if you take the time and make it.

Ground rice:

Brown some rice on the stove top. This is only about a half a cup but you can do as much as you want and put it aside.

Increase the heat until the rice begins to look brown. You must stir constantly. This is important. Do not walk away to finish a load of laundry. Trust me.

Once the rice is a nice brown color, take it off the stove and let cool. Once it’s cool, you can put it in a grinder/mixer and ground the rice to a fine but not too powdery mix. There should be small pieces of rice for texture.

You can put the rice in a container and put it aside to store or you can go ahead and make the rest of the dish.

I use a London Broil cut because it’s affordable and what my mother used:) If however, you are feeling frisky and rich, go for a nicer cut.

This is a three pound piece of meat. I know it’s a lot but I put the rest aside for leftovers.

Now we chop.

1. Chop a bundle of well washed cilantro, more if you like.
2. Chop red onion into slivers.
3. Chop the mint.
4. Cut cherry tomatoes in half.
5. Chop the hot peppers into small pieces.

Speaking of peppers…this is definitely one ingredient that you can moderate according to you own taste. Our household (everyone but the boy) can eat very spicy food. If you are not as experienced with it, put in only what you are comfortable with. I am not going to post a quantity for how much pepper to put in. It’s up to you.

If you don’t have small Thai peppers as shown in the photo, you can use whatever pepper you like. Last week, I used McCormick ground pepper. Works just fine! Mint as shown here is also something that you can choose to put in if you can find it. My yard was overgrown with it for a period of time.

Ingredients:

1. 2 1/2 pounds of beef (London Broil)
2. 1/2 cup Thai fish sauce
3. 1/4 cup water
4. Juice of one lime (here’s how you cut that lime.)
5. 2 – 3 tablespoons of chopped Thai hot peppers (or any other pepper to taste.)
6. 2 cups chopped cilantro
7. 2 cups thinly sliced red onion
8. 1 cup chopped fresh mint
9. 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
10. 1/4 cup ground rice

Directions:

Grill or broil the beef. Be careful to not over-cook it. Leave some pink in the middle.

Slice the beef into small slivers being careful to discard any fat.

Put in the fish sauce, water and juice of one lime. Toss well (sometimes I’ll use my hands.) Put in ground rice. Toss well. Put in the peppers. Toss well. Put in all chopped and prepared vegetables. Toss well.

I make it for guests quite often and they love it! Even some of the boys at the lake ate it. You gotta try it.

How To Grammatically Correctly Cut A Lime

I had no idea how carelessly and quickly I had been posting this week. The husband called and said, “Your photo is on the right and Kristina’s photo is on the left.”

I corrected it.

And the girl told me tonight, “Mama, “we was” or “we were?” when she read this post.

I corrected it.

At least she’s reading my blog, that’s more than I can say for the boy. However, unlike bloggers with small children, my kids may be offended by what I write about them so it’s probably a good thing he doesn’t read LifeSignatures. Teens are strange creatures.

So tonight, I am taking my time. Not rushing. And I dare you to find a grammar mistake.

I’m going to show you how to cut a lime. Because next week, we are going to make waterfall beef. And I measured the ingredients, which is something I rarely do so just know that I did it for you.

I know I start quite a few of my sentences with prepositions or conjunctions. It’s a writing style. There’s nothing grammatically incorrect about it…I don’t think.

Begin with a lime and a very sharp knife.

Cut the lime just off center.

Then flip the lime and cut it again, off center.

Flip the lime again and cut it off center.

Are you getting the point?

Cutting the center out will eliminate the tough sinewy center part of the lime which will make squeezing it much easier. You will get more juice out of the lime and with much less effort than cutting it through the center. Limes are expensive during certain times of the year, and you want to get as much juice out of it as you can.

Once the lime is cut off of the center, you can squeeze the center to get every last bit of juice out of the lime and you don’t have to be a weight lifter to do it.

Limes are very important in Thai cooking and it is much easier to cook Thai food if you know the techniques that are handed down by Thai grandmothers.

So get your lime cutting technique down before next week. You can use the juice for margaritas:)

I hope this is of use to someone, not just bartenders.

Waterfall Beef ~ The Beef

Vegetarians are not going to find this appetizing. But me? I’m a protein girl. I can go for a little while on vegetables but then I have to have a good piece of meat.

I use a London Broil cut for my Waterfall Beef. If you want to splurge, you can use a tenderloin, that would be delicious. But this cut is good for your wallet.

There’s no marinating or anything fancy. Just throw it into the broiler. Broil it until it gets a nice crust on each side, about 4-5 minutes. I like it medium rare but it’s up to your taste of course.

Later on, we’re going to chop everything up…

Here is the beef at the Lemongrass Restaurant.
Here are the fresh ingredients.

Sorry about the dirty oven, but it’s well used and well loved.

Waterfall Beef, Fresh Ingredients

These are the fresh ingredients you’ll need for the Waterfall Beef.

Red Onion
Cherry Tomatoes
Limes
Cilantro
Mint
Chili peppers

I love this cilantro. It smells heavenly.

The fresh mint, I love the smell. I breathe it in.

Thai chili peppers. You can use dried peppers,  you can use McCormick’s peppers, or if you’re wimpy, don’t use any. But it won’t be the same.

Trust me. Go forth and shop.

Waterfall Beef

I’m going to show you how to make this next week.

I don’t know why it’s called Waterfall Beef.  My mother calls it  yum nuk, without the “k” sound. I call it beef salad. You’ll call it delicious.

Some people eat lots of spaghetti and meat balls. We eat a lot of beef salad. Until then!

Making Sticky Rice

A family favorite around here is sticky rice. I’m not going to go into great detail on how to make it. I’m not feeling particularly long-winded, go figure. I may at a later time. It’s a staple around our house. We have it all the time. The kids love it because they can eat it with their hands. They can literally play with their food, and it’s okay.

Another reason I’m not going to go into minute detail about how to make it is because you can’t get it anywhere outside of an Asian store. I know. I’ve looked. And Neighbor Yvonne has looked. So that’s bad news if we run out. I drive to civilization to get it. Around here that means, an hour drive or more. If you ask, and if I know you personally and if you live within 10 minutes of me, I’ll get you some the  next time I’m at either of those places. Just let me know.

That was the worst grammar. Mrs. Brush  my old English teacher is turning in her grave. At least I think she’s dead. She was pretty old when I was in high school. Anyway…moving on…

If you happen to be out and are looking for it, make sure you buy the package that says “Sweet Rice”. It’s not Jasmine rice, or short grained rice, or any other kind of rice except sweet rice.

Soak the rice in some water for about an hour. Sometimes I’ll put it in water in the morning then go do what I need to do the rest of the day. That way it will be ready when it’s time to cook dinner.

I also have this contraption that I bought at a Vietnamese store specifically to steam the rice in. I think you can just use a regular pot though.

Fill it with water and then put the rice in a bamboo steamer thingy. I don’t know what it’s called.

I told you I wasn’t going into great detail. I have no idea what some of these things are. I just have them. You can probably use any bamboo steamer. You can buy those anywhere. Just remember that it has to be porous but the pores have to be small enough so that the rice doesn’t fall through. But I probably didn’t have to say that, duh.

It takes about 7-10 minutes to steam. Just keep checking it. If you steam it too long it will get soggy and too sticky. Once it’s done, I dump it all onto my counter top and spread it out to let it cool. Then I put it into a bamboo rice keeper thingy.

I’m going to let my mother demonstrate the dumping out process since I couldn’t take pictures while I did it. Really. Just dump it onto the counter.

My mom blows on it too, to help the heat dissipate.

pssst…these photos are from last Thanksgiving.

My mom has a nicer collection of rice keepers.  Every time she goes to Thailand she gets a couple of pretty ones. Almost everyone at the table has their own.

Once I argued with a street vendor in Chaing Mai, Thailand over how much I was going to pay for a rice keeper. She wanted $4.25 and I thought it was too much money so I didn’t buy it. The husband said “Do you know you were haggling over 25 cents?” It’s the principle.

I know that you’re not going to rush out and make this after this dense explanation. I may have a sticky rice making party. Yes, I think that’s a great idea. Hmmm…

We’re not having sticky rice for dinner tonight. We’re having lemon chicken and pasta instead. The boys are watching the hockey game which is in over-time right now. That’s why I have time to write this post. If the game isn’t over soon, I’m going to eat without them.

How I Make Eggrolls 2

If you want to see the first part of this eggroll process, click here.

How do you get them to look like that? It can take a little bit of practice but it’s pretty easy really.

Take a sheet of eggroll skin and place a small amount of the mix on top of it and close to one corner.  About a spoonful.

Take one corner and fold it over the mixture.

Roll it over once to get the mixture secure.

It looks like this.

Hold it securely and fold one end over, then the other.

Like this.

Roll the rest around and leave a little bit of the corner.

I put a little egg in a tiny cup or sometimes I’ll just put it right in the mixture. Then I take a little bit in a spoon to use as “glue” so that it keeps it together. I put a little bit of egg on one corner and fold it over.

There it is! A perfect little eggroll. One down and 99 more to go.

I deep fry these until they are these beautiful golden brown yummy rolls. I use a paper bag and place paper towels on top to soak up the excess oil.

The family loves these. Except for the boy. I make him mac and cheese.

Try them, try them now! And tomorrow, I’ll show you how to make the sauce. Actually, I have several sauces. I’ll show them all eventually!

Bon appetite!

How I Make Eggrolls 1

I received some sage advice from someone I respected deeply last week. I was bemoaning the fact that haven’t been cooking a lot lately and I love to cook. He said, “Well, then cook. If no one is home, cook anyway. Someone else could always use a good meal.” He was nice enough not to have added, “Duh” at the end of that statement.

So this is food week! I have been cooking, but not taking pictures. It’s hard to cook and photograph at the same time. I’m not much one for staging.

So here’s the first of two post on making eggrolls. Or rather, how I make eggrolls. How my mother taught me how. These are really simple, the wrapping can be somewhat time consuming but it’s fun. If you can wrap a present, you can make eggrolls. I may have left out half the population with that stipulation…anyway, here goes.

You will need:

1lb ground beef
1lb ground pork
1 yellow onion
1 package of carrots (about 6 or 7 individual carrots)
1-2 eggs (it depends)
salt
pepper
eggroll skins

Here’s the eggroll skins. Giant may have them. I found these in the commisary at Andrews AFB. I know not everyone can get there, I’m sorry. If you can’t find something similar at Giant, try Whole Foods.

Put the pork and beef together in a big mixing bowl.

Season it with salt and pepper and stick your hand in there and mix it up. Then put an egg in and mix up the goo some more.

Chop up the onion into small diced pieces. (I cry every time.)

Wash and peel the carrots. Cut off the top and bottom and grate it. This takes muscle…

Put the veggies in a bowl and set aside for a moment.

Throw the veggies into the bowl of meat…

and mix together with your hand. It’s the best way. Just mix it all together. Don’t be afraid to get a little dirty. It’s all love I tell you.

How easy was that?

Tomorrow, we’ll wrap the egg rolls. See you then!

Tropical Storm Hanna Meal

So on top of cleaning the house, I had time to cook while Tropical Storm Hanna was pouring rain on the Mid-Atlantic states. I know, I know, golf clap. I really do cook just about every night, whether we are having a weather phenomenon or not.

Anyway, tonight we are having steak with red curried rice. Remember I told you that the best way to starting cooking Thai food is to start getting some things for your kitchen? Well here’s one thing you will need.

This red curry paste and you will not be ablet to get this particular brand at the local grocery store, but I have seen it at Giant. It’s in a smaller can and it says, well, Red Curry. It’s not as spicy as the green curry and I think it has more flavor than the Indian curries that you can get at Giant and Safeway.

I start with these things, red curry, vegetables and cooked rice. That’s my rice cooker and I’ve used it for so long that I don’t remember how to cook rice in a pot. The yellow squash was a gift from Neighbor Leigh who brought it from the University of Maryand where he works. I hope it didn’t come from the research labs there…it’s huge. The peppers are from my garden, the broccoli was left over from last night’s meal and the carrots are from a bag that the girl had for the horse. My point is, you can get fiberous vegetables from anywhere, and it almost doesn’t matter what the vegetables are. Choose vegetables with lots of color, I love yellow vegetables, and they are good for you. Go ahead and chop them.

I heat some oil (this time I used canola oil) and the red curry together in a pan. This is the same pan I used to fry my fish. It’s used a lot. I can’t give you exact measurements, so when I say “some” use about 4 tablespoons. Adjust as you go. After the oil and curry is heated, throw in the rice, throw in the chopped veggies and stir, stir, stir. If it’s too dry, pull the contents to the side and add some chicken stock. And stir some more.

Now, the secret ingredient. Remember I told you to go get some fish sauce? Well, it’s the secret ingredient in almost every Thai dish. Turn off the burner and add the fish sauce over the rice. Not too much, it may be too salty. Just enough to taste.

I served the rice with steak this night, but any protein will do. I try to have lean proteins but sometimes, a girl just has to have a big steak. The husband loved it, the kids had mac and cheese. One day, I’ll have to put that recipe up.

Bon appetit!