Name: Thai-Style Beef Salad
Cuisine: Australia
Ingredients: 2 teaspoons vegetable oil (groundnut oil works well here); finely grated zest of 2 limes and 150 ml lime juice (6–8 limes); 3 baby Gem lettuces or 1 large Cos or romaine lettuce; 2 heaped tablespoons grated palm sugar (or use demerara or brown sugar); 2 garlic cloves, peeled; 1 teaspoon Thai fish sauce; salt and freshly ground black pepper; 600 g beef fillet, trimmed of all sinew and fat; bunch of coriander, ideally with the roots on; ½ teaspoon salt; 2 handfuls of roasted, skinless peanuts, roughly chopped (or use the caramelized peanuts); handful of mint leaves, stems removed and large leaves torn in half; 3 banana shallots, thinly sliced (or use 4–6 regular round shallots); 3 tablespoons white rice; 1 teaspoon soy sauce; 1–2 hot red chillies, roughly chopped (more or less to taste, but you do want some fire in this dish)

Preparation info

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Salads

By Peter Gordon

Published 2005

About

I first ate a salad much like this in Melbourne in 1982, at a Thai restaurant on Brunswick Street, and I was blown away by the freshness of it all. The heat of the chilli was tempered by palm sugar and highlighted by the mint and coriander. It just reeked of ‘fresh’... if there’s such a thing. Travelling through Thailand 4 years later, I encountered a few different versions, but all with the same basic philosophy of heat, sweet and herbs. I’ve made this many times over the years and at The