Had to find a recipe for this edition as the rostered columnist has COVID! Thought you might like to try our daughter’s Vietnamese Beef Salad.

Vietnamese Beef Salad

Ingredients for salad

Vermicelli noodles
Fried shallots
Crushed peanuts (or cashews if prefer)
Nice piece of beef marinated in some sweet chilli sauce or just garlic, chilli and ginger
Any combination of:
- Snow peas – sliced
- Red and green capsicum thinly sliced
- Bean shoots
- Snow pea tendrils
- Cucumber, halved and then sliced
- Shredded lettuce
- Carrot sticks
A heap of (this is essential) coriander, mint and basil.

1 finely chopped chilli (seeds removed) or use sweet chilli sauce if you don’t like it too spicy.
Equal amounts of fish sauce and brown sugar (eg 7tbsp fish sauce, 7tbsp sugar, which seems a lot but it is fantastic and you don’t use too much on your salad anyway)
Small amount of hot water to dissolve sugar.

Put vermicelli in large bowl, add boiling water and leave to sit until noodles tender. Drain and allow to cool.
In one big bowl just combine all the salad items together and mix well.
Cook beef searing well on each side and then remove from pan and slice thinly.
In each serving bowl put a handful of noodles, then a handful of salad mix, a few pieces of beef, a sprinkle of fried shallots and crushed nuts and then a couple of spoonfuls of the dressing drizzled over top.

Glen