{this months recipe}

• Serves: 4 {as a starter} / Preparation Time: 30 min / Cooking Time: 30 min

Ingredients

• Salad:
• 2 tsp garlic oil
• 1 scotch fillet, approx. 250g
• 1 packet (approx.180g) salad leaves
• 50g chargrilled pickled eggplant
• 50g chargrilled pickled capsicum
• 50g button mushroom pickeld
• 3 tbs chopped mint

• Dressing:
• 2 x 15ml tbs fish sauce (nam pla)
• 1 x 15ml tbs redcurrant jelly
• 2 x 15ml tbs rice vinegar
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped, or 1/4 tsp crushed chillies
• 1 spring onion, finely sliced

Method

Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan, and cook the fillet for 5 mins on one side, and then turn it over and cook for another 2½ mins on the other.

Wrap the meat in foil, let it rest for 5 mins.

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the dressing ingredients.

Open the foil parcel, empty the meat juices into the dressing. Cut the beef into very fine slices or strips and add them also. The acid in the dressing will cook the beef a little more while it steeps. If the meat is not rare, leave it for a short time, but for a longer time if it seems undercooked. You want it still gorgeously pink to sit on the salad.

Divide the salad leaves between 2 (or 4) plates and then arrange the beef with the dressing over each one. Finally scatter the chopped mint on top.

“I love the tangy and chilli fire of Thai cooking. I equally love the traditional Italian partnership of beef, with chargrilled Italian style pickled vegetables with redcurrant and mint. It happened one day because of what I had in the kitchen, I decided to bring the two together. Consider it as reworking of those hot and sour beef salads of South East Asia. Redcurrant jelly stands in for the sweetness of palm sugar and I use rice vinegar instead of lime juice. I regard a salad as a treat for supper and my wife loves this – she doesn’t even notice it is a salad combining two cultures. It is also a useful recipe to have up your sleeve for a starter on days when dining seems to require one.”