Asian Beef Salad with Spring Rolls

Yesterday was a long day of training (for the marathon) followed by four hours of gardening. A beautiful summers day, it was lovely to be out in the sunshine. I had two lovely looking beef fillets that I had earlier planned to simply pan fry, but now I not only wanted a salad; I wanted to see some colour on my plate, having been working with the flowers all day. I decided to travel to the Far East and make an Asian beef noodle salad.

Ingredients:

2 x fillet steaks (beef), sliced thinly
25g coriander, leaves and stems separated
1 inch piece ginger
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 lemon
1 lime
1/4 cup (55g) brown sugar
2 red chillies (I used birds eye)
1 small red onion, sliced thinly
4 inch piece cucumber, halved, seeded and sliced  thinly
2 tbsp. cornflour (cornstarch)
rice noodles
chopped peanuts, to serve
1 sliced red chilli, to serve

Method

To make the dressing, put the coriander stalks, garlic, ginger, sugar, lemon and lime zest and juice into a hand blender and blitz until finely chopped. Put the beef slices into a bowl and stir half of the dressing through the beef. Marinade in the fridge for 1/2 hour.

In a large bowl, mix the red onion, coriander leaves & cucumber and set to one side. Cook the noodles as to packet instructions, rinse in fresh water and drain.

Fry the beef strips in batches for about 2 minutes until cooked. Now add the noodles and beef to the salad bowl along with the other half of the dressing. Stir well.

Serve topped with the chopped peanuts and some freshly chopped chilli and coriander.

I also served this with some of my Easy Baked Spring Rolls (recipe here) and some dips. Colourful, fragrant and delicious! Enjoy!