More Amazing Salads

I have always been looking for a good salad recipe to use up left over chicken. This Thai Chicken, Coconut and Coriander Salad with Crispy Shallots is the best one I have found yet. If you don’t have any left over chicken, poach the chicken in the dressing as in the recipe., Coconut and Coriander Salad with Crispy Shallots

Thai Chicken, Coconut and Coriander Salad
1 x 400ml can coconut milk
Fresh or frozen lime leaves
2 Thai birds eye chillis, lightly bashed
Small bunch coriander
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon palm sugar, or brown sugar
2 chicken breasts, trimmed
40g toasted coconut chips (try Ocado)
½ a cucumber
3 carrots, peeled
1 red pepper, cut into very thin rings
1 lime
3 shallots, peeled
Sunflower oil
Sea salt

Place the coconut milk, fish sauce, the stalks of the coriander (saving the leaves for the salad), the chillis, the sugar, a teaspoon of salt and the lime leaves in a saucepan. Add the chicken breast and bring to the boil. Gently simmer to poach the chicken for 12–15 minutes or until cooked through. Remove chicken from the pan and rest. Turn up the heat on coconut milk and reduce until a few tablespoons remain. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. Strain and add the juice of the lime. Taste and adjust seasoning. It should be fragrant, spicy, sour and sweet.

Meanwhile, shave the cucumber and carrots, leaving just the cores, with a peeler. Put in a large bowl with the coconut chips, the red pepper and coriander leaves. When cool enough to handle, shred the chicken.

Slice the shallots as thinly as possible. You can use a mandolin or food processor. Place in a small saucepan and just cover with oil. Over a high heat, stir the shallots frequently until they are golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain well on kitchen paper. Spread out thinly and allow to cook. Lightly season with salt and fluff up so that the shallots go crispy.

Celery Salad with Dates, Almonds, and Parmesan

When you get to my age and you have been cooking as long as I have, it is really hard to find recipes that are fresh, exciting or different but this simple celery salad is really exciting. I’m not even that keen on fruit or nuts in savoury dishes but the celery, lemon and the chilli really balance out the sweetness. It made a very tasty lunch!

Celery Salad with Dates, Almonds, and Parmesan
Serves 2
½ cup/large handful raw almonds with skins8 celery stalks, thinly sliced on a diagonal, use leaves too
6 dates, pitted, coarsely chopped
Zest of one lemon plus 2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Chunk of Parmesan, shaved
4 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
Very small pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

Toss almonds, celery, celery leaves, lemon zest and dates in a medium bowl; season with salt and pepper. Mix the lemon juice and olive oil together well. Add a small pinch of chilli flakes and mix through the salad. Serve with shavings of parmesan.Add the chicken to the bowl with the vegetables and then dress with the dressing (you may not need all of it.) Pile onto plates and top with the crispy shallots.

Warm Salad of Avocado, Baby Spinach and Bacon, Poached Egg

Salad Tiede was all the rage about 10 years ago. Literally translated as “warm salad” it is one of those culinary terms which just sound so much more exciting in French than it does in English. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have to taste exciting. Super quick and simple it relies on really great ingredients to transform it into something really special, so use the best bacon, avocados and eggs that you can find.

Warm Salad of Avocado, Baby Spinach and Bacon, Poached Egg
Serves 2
8 rashers of smoked streaky bacon, cut into lardons
2 organic, free-range eggs
Large handful or two of baby spinach leaves
2 ripe avocadoes, cut into large chunks
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Splash white wine vinegar
Freshly ground black pepper
Extra virgin olive oil

Put a small pan of water onto boil. Fry the bacon in a little olive oil until really golden and crispy in a heavy bottomed frying pan. Remove the pan from the heat from the heat. Put the spinach leaves into a large bowl with the avocado chunks. Add the red wine vinegar to the pan with the bacon and allow to bubble away. Add a dash of white wine vinegar to the pan of boiling water, turn down the heat and carefully crack in the eggs. Poach until the whites have totally cooked but the yolks are still runny. Remove with a slotted spoon onto some kitchen paper to drain. Stir the mustard into the pan with the bacon. I should have cooled a bit by now. You want the mustard to amalgamate with the bacon fat and the vinegar, not cook. Season and pour the bacon and dressing over the spinach and avocado. Toss well and tip into bowls. Top with the eggs and a good grind of black pepper. Serve straight away.

A lighter Lunch

    

I am a bit lazy about lunch. I often tend to skip breakfast. Yes, I know is healthy living violation number one, but I am just not a breakfast person. Two big cups of decaf coffee is all I can stomach first thing in the morning. But often I have to work through lunch as well and then just as my blood sugar hits an all time low, I usually opt for a much larger bowl than necessary of granola, packed with nuts and seeds. Unfortunately, as we all know, Granola is also packed with sugar. The second ingredient on my Simply Nut Granola by Dorset Cereals, is golden syrup. Not exactly an ingredient I would associate with health, although Tate and Lyle had other ideas. 

 Isn’t it amazing how perceptions have changed. Can you imagine a child after a daily dose of Golden Syrup particularly after the recommended bedtime snack as well, of even more golden syrup stirred into a glass of milk? The advice in this book reminds me of some of the other suggestions in vintage cookbooks, extolling the virtues of cigarettes and opium. It does make you wonder what guidance given out now, will be scoffed at in the future.

Anyway, this weeks recipe makes a really quick and easy lunch and is one of those when you manage to somehow conjure up a delicious meal from almost nowhere. All I had left in the fridge was a lettuce, some carrots and a cucumber and a left over piece of fillet steak. 

We can learn a lot from Asian recipes as they have long understood that meat and fish are costly and they know how to make expensive ingredients go along way, padded out with plenty of cheaper and healthier vegetables.  Although the list of ingredients often looks long and complicated, it really is store cupboard stuff and it really could not be quicker and easier to make and a whole lot less calories than Granola.

Vietnamese Lettuce and Beef Wraps
You can make the dipping sauce and marinade the meat the day before.

For the marinade
1 fillet steak
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce (Nam Pla)
1 tsp caster sugar
1-1½ tsp toasted sesame oil, to taste

For the dipping sauce
1 tbsp. rice vinegar, to taste
1 tsp. golden caster sugar, to taste
1 tbsp. Fish sauce (Nam Pla)
1 stick lemongrass
1 lime, juice only
1 fresh red chilli

For the wraps
1 carrot, cut into fine julienne strips or grated
½ cucumber
3 sprigs mint, leaves picked and chopped
½ small bunch coriander, leaves and stalks roughly chopped
1 lettuce such as Batavia or baby gem

Lime wedges, to serve

For the marinade, put the steak into a large bowl, add the remaining ingredients and mix until coated evenly. Cover the bowl with cling film and leave to marinate in the fridge for at least two hours, or overnight if possible.

Meanwhile make the dipping sauce. Mix the rice vinegar, sugar, fish sauce and lime juice together. Finely chop the red chilli. If you like it hot then leave the seeds in, if not remove them. Remove any tough outer leaves from the lemongrass and trim the bottom. Grate using a microplaner starting at the bottom and grating until nearly three quarters of the way up. (If you do not have a microplaner, chop very finely). Add with the chilli to your dipping sauce and taste. Adjust the flavours as necessary – adding a little more sugar if it’s too sour, or more rice vinegar or lime juice if too sweet.

Next peel and grate your carrots and cut your cucumber into julienne. A mandolin is good for this. Separate and wash the salad leaves and leave to drain. Pick the leaves off the herbs.

In a large heavy-based frying pan, heat a dash of oil. Shake off any excess marinade from the steaks and cook for 2-3 minutes on either side – depending on their thickness and how rare you like your steak. Tip over the marinade and remove and rest on a plate for five minutes.

To serve, arrange the lettuce leaves on a serving plate. Fill the lettuce leaves with carrot and cucumber. Add a small handful of herbs. Slice the rested steak, and top each leaf with a slice or two of steak, tipping any resting juices over the top. Serve with the dipping sauce and lime wedges on the side.

New Year's Resolutions

What are my New Year's resolutions? Write my blog more often. It is already the 17th January and this is my first post of the year. Brilliant start! 

The others were drink less and eat more healthily. I managed to go six days without any alcohol which is probably the longest stretch I have managed since I was last pregnant, 9 years ago. 

As for the healthy eating; I have been scouring the newspapers and magazines for the latest ideas. Deliciously Ella is very last year now but Amelia Freer’s second book Cook. Nourish. Glow. seems to be very “of the minute”.  She is a Nutritional therapist and wants to completely re-educate the way you eat. She explains that we eat too much sugar, dairy, processed food and gluten. To summarise, somewhat briefly, she believes in buying good, seasonal, preferably organic produce and taking a little time to cook them at home. Good news for all my readers because that is exactly what you have been already doing for years. Not exactly rocket science!

But my personal diet message to myself as I get older, is all about re-hydration. There is no doubt as we age everything: our hair and nails and skin gets drier and moisturising from the inside as well as the outside can really help.  We are used to rubbing fatty moisturisers into our skin, but this is constantly at attack from the environment, so it would seem that it might be more effective to put the fats inside you, so that your body can do the job of lubricating you itself. Of course, by this I mean good fats rather than bad fats, namely Omega 3 fats, essential fatty acids. I think we all panic at this word, imagining that we have to consume bucket loads of sardines and mackerel to achieve our daily quota, but whilst fatty fish are clearly good for you, all sorts of vegetables, seeds and nuts are also excellent sources.

Here are a few to try and include in your diet
Flaxseeds
Walnuts
Beef
Brussel Sprouts
Cauliflower
Winter Squash
Broccoli
Kale
Spinach
Green Beans
Parsley

It is not only Omega 3 which provides good fats. Monounsaturated and Polyunsaturated fats are also good. A moderation of saturated fats are also acceptable from whole milk, coconut oil and grass-fed meat but tran-fats should be avoided at all costs in commercially baked goods, packaged snack foods, margarine and commercially prepared fried foods.

To make sure you are getting enough good fats (Monounsaturated and Polyunsaturated) stock up on avocados, olives, nuts (almonds, peanuts, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, pecans, cashews and walnuts), seeds (sunflower, sesame and pumpkin seeds), flaxseed and fatty fish.

Luckily I had a couple of Avocados in my Riverford box this week, so I set about making up a new salad. I am particularly pleased with the salad dressing which turned out really creamy and fresh. I just used tarragon, which always goes well with chicken and some basil for added zing. 

I also like chicken cooked in this butterflied method as it cooks in minutes, as it is so thin, and stays really juicy and tender. Finally, of course you can add any other vegetables you have to hand and your salad leaves are up to you too. I used a mixture of rocket, watercress and a few sprigs of mint. So get hydrating!

Grilled Chicken with Almond Dressing, Avocado and Vegetable Salad

Dressing
50g almonds, soaked
A few sprigs of what herbs you fancy – coriander, basil, parsley or
tarragon, leaves picked

100ml extra virgin olive oil
2 x 150g chicken breasts
Zest of a lemon

Dried oregano
Extra virgin olive oil
Mixed salad leaves and maybe a few sprigs of herbs
1 bulb fennel
1 carrot
1 small courgette
1 ripe avocado
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
lemon wedges, to serve

For the dressing drain the almonds, add the olive oil, the herbs, a good pinch of salt and pepper and some water and puree with a hand blender until smooth and creamy. Add more water to get a good consistency and check for seasoning.

Take each chicken breast and cut it through the from one side to the other, stopping just short of the edge. This is difficult to explain so please follow link. Unfold the chicken breast and lay flat. Season with salt and pepper, dried oregano and lemon zest on both sides. Drizzle with olive oil.
Shave the fennel, courgette and carrot with a mandolin. Peel and thinly slice the avocado. Dress the salad and shaved vegetables with a little olive oil and a small pinch of salt. Arrange on plates. Heat a griddle pan of just a large frying pan. Arrange the avocado on the plates with the salad. Grill the chicken on both sides until just cooked. Place on top of the salad. Drizzle with almond dressing and serve with a wedge of lemon.

Perfect Pasties

As I was making the kids sandwiches, yet again, for their school lunch-boxes, I thought how nice it would be to be able to give them something different for a change. A home-made Cornish pasty sprang to mind.  What a great way of using up vegetables and nourishing the kids at the same time. 

Cornish pasties date back to the 13th Century, during the reign of Henry III. They were eaten by poorer working families who could only afford cheap ingredients such as potatoes, swede and onion. Meat was added later. Miners and farm workers took this portable and easy to eat convenience food with them to work because it was so well suited to the purpose. Its size and shape made it easy to carry, its pastry case insulated the contents and was durable enough to survive, while its wholesome ingredients provided enough sustenance to see the workers through their long and arduous working days. The crust (crimped edge) was used as a handle which was then discarded due to the high levels of arsenic in many of the tin mines.  Luckily, now a days we can eat all the pastry but the classic mix of beef, swede, onion and potato is set in stone and it would be considered sacrilege to modify these ingredients in any way.  

But your pasty does not have to be Cornish.  In fact it could come from almost anywhere and contain whatever you like or have to hand.  It is a fabulous way of using up left over root vegetables which always are in abundance throughout the winter months. Carrots, celeriac, parsnips, turnips, sweet potatoes and squashes all work fantastically well.  It could be meat free but it certainly makes a little meat go a long way. Just remember whatever you put in your pasty, it must be cut pretty small and must all cook in the same time. Because the ingredients go in raw, unlike most pies the filling must cook before the pastry burns.  But fear not. As long as the pieces in your filling are never any larger than about 1cm, it always somehow seems to work. 

My next top tip for busy cooks, is ready made, ready rolled shortcrust pasty.  The supermarkets have really got their acts together on the pastry front and you can find a good selection of all-butter pastries in the chilled or freezer section.  Check the ingredients and make sure that they contain little more than butter and flour and you can guarantee that they will be good.  

Last of all I recommend that you make up a large batch because they disappear really fast. They freeze brilliantly - I wasn't expecting you to get up a 5.00am and make them from scratch each morning for the kids lunch-box. I freeze them, uncooked and simply put them in the oven first thing in the morning and they are ready to go about 45 minutes later. Then straight in the lunch-box and they might even be still be warm by lunch time.  What better way to sustain your little miners.

Cornish Pasties

400g/14oz good-quality beef skirt or rump steak (very lean, no fat or gristle.)
200g/7oz waxy potatoes such as Charlotte (I didn't even peel mine.)
200g/7oz swede 
175g/6oz onions
salt and freshly ground black pepper
knob of butter
Ready rolled all-butter shortcrust pasty
1 egg, lightly whisked
Chop the potatoes into cubes, no bigger than 1 cms.  Peel the sweed and do the same.  Trim any fat or gristle from the meat and cut into small cubes, about 1cm.  Chop the onion fairly finely and mix together with the other ingredients and plenty of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Lightly grease a baking tray with butter or line with baking or silicone paper. Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3. (If baking from frozen then 160C.) Cut your pasty in to discs roughly 15cms wide.  I use a small bowl to cut round. Spoon some mixture into the middle of each disk and top with a knob of butter. Then bring the pastry around and crimp together.  I find the ready rolled pastry stick fine. Do not get the pastry wet or that will stop is sealing. A genuine Cornish pasty has a distinctive ‘D’ shape and is crimped on one side, never on top but I like mine the other way.  It is up to you. Just make sure it is well sealed and has plenty of filling. Put the pasties onto the baking tray and brush the top of each pasty with the egg. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for about 30 minutes or until the pasties are golden-brown. (If baking from frozen allow up to 45 minutes.) 

Beta Than Cider

I recently realised that I was not doing nearly enough exercise. Since the kids have finally both started school, I don't even seem to walk as much I as used to.  No more endless trips to the park pushing buggies.  This lack of exercise is taking its toll - mainly on my hips and although there is absolutely no sign of any warm weather ahead at all, I just know that it is going to catch me out suddenly.  Winter will come to an end one day, the sun will come out and I will be very white, over-weight and un-shaven.  So I decided to take up Bikram Yoga.  Although frowned upon by purist yogis, this variation of yoga is done in a heated room which not only causes you to sweat profusely but you also have to work twice as hard, just to cope with the heat. The idea is it makes you more agile and less likely to suffer injury and the heat makes it more cardiovascular so you burn more calories. In reality, it is really almost unbearable but you feel fantastic when you manage to survive yet another class.

Unfortunately this new exercise regime also coincided with another new discovery. I developed an unhealthy obsession with cider.  Not just any cider by Henney's Frome Valley Cider which is so delicious that I just couldn't get enough of it.  It just seemed the perfect way to re-hydrate and re-tox in the evening after a hard couple of hours detoxing. Unfortunately, it turns out that cider is incredibly fattening and so it was having a very detrimental effect on my attempts to loose weight.  I now appeared to be developing a beer-belly as well, or a cider-belly to be more precise. So, very sadly, the cider had to go. But what could I possibly replace it with?

The only joyful experience about going to Bikram Yoga is that they have a lovely juice bar with deliciously, tempting sounding concoctions.  However, having finished my relatively cheap 30 day introduction offer, the price rose rapidly, especially as they appear to expect you to go every day. However, at around £11.00 a class I really cannot afford to go more that twice a week and it has also forced me to economise on my new juice fix.  So I have turned to making my own.  After a few weeks of experimenting this is my favourite combination. 

First of all it must have beetroot, the ultimate super-food.  So long is it's list of benefits, that it is hard to believe that there is anything that beetroot can't do.  To counteract the sweetness I balance the flavour with celery and fennel and finally add a few carrots and a little apple. The overall list of health benefits of these vegetables on The World's Healthiest Foods website is so long that it would take you a week to read it but what is so amazing is that it tastes so good that you don't really even care.  The kids also love making juice so you can get them to do most of the work however there can be a bit of a battle as to who gets to drink most of the end results  but what better way to encourage your kids towards a healthy diet.

Beta than Cider

I really do recommend organic vegetables for juicing.  Since they are raw and I don't even bother peeling them I just don't want a whole lot of pesticides in my juice.  It is a really good way of using up an Organic Vegetable box which can work out cheaper than buying organic at the supermarket.  If you really want to go for it, add a handful of something green as well.  Spinach, beet-tops or Watercress are all especially good.
2 sticks Celery, washed
2 Carrot, washed and topped
2 Beetroot, topped tailed and well scrubbed
2 Apples
1 head of Fennel

Wash all the vegetables and cut the Beetroot, Apple and Fennel into wedges which will fit into the juicer. Carrots and Celery are usually the perfect juicing size already to fit perfectly into the 
juicer shoot. Mix all the juices together well and drink as soon as possible. I like to keep the vegetables in the fridge to make your drink nice and cold.

If you would like some more juice recipes I highly recommend Thirst by Nigel Slater.

KFC

I don't think I have ever had chicken at KFC. When I was a kid, there was a horific story in the papers, about how someone had got a bone stuck in their throat whilst eating Kentucky Fried Chicken and had been rushed to hospital.  After having had the bone removed it had been analised and the resulting verdict was that it was in fact a rat bone.  Whether this story was true or just an urban myth it made a lasting impression on me and I never stepped foot into a KFC for years.  Then in my 20's I bought a flat in Shepherd's Bush.  Near the end of my road was a branch of KFC.  The smell was so horrid that as a result I have managed now to get to my mid 40's, never having eaten a piece of fried chicken.  


But, as I mentioned a few weeks ago I have been watching a lot of Diners, Drive-in and Dives and Guy is forever raving about deep-fried chicken from South Carolina to Tennessee, not forgetting Kentucky.  Persistant shots of him biting into steaming hot, golden, crispy pieces of chicken have finally got to me and I had to try some. So I set about making the finger likin' best chicken that I could.  It would seem however, that everybodies recipe for their chicken seasoning is always "secret", though I am not sure why. Amazingly though, after a little research, I managed to find the "secret" recipe for Colonel Sander's very own chicken, with all 11 herbs and spices.  Nothing is sacred.  Apparently it was leaked some time ago.  Anyway,  I gave it a go and I have got to say - deep-fried chicken is really, really good.  Maybe not the thing to eat everyday but hot from the fryer with some freshly made coleslaw, I reckon I could really get into soul food.  Not surprisingly the kids loved it too.

KFC' Mix
I left out the MSG.  I was going to be really clever and try and add my own Umami in the form of some powdered Kombu but it was so delicious already, we had eaten all the chicken by the time I managed to buy some. Which just goes to show -  it doesn't need it.

1 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon ground sage
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon onion salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons Accent (MSG)

Deep-fried Chicken

1 free-range and or organic chicken with skin, cut into 8 or 10 pieces
Vegetable oil for deep frying
1 cup flour
1 batch of spice mix (above)

Pre heat oil in deep fryer to 340° to 375° F / 170 to 185° C.  Use a thermometer. Wash the chicken with cold water, both inside and outside, and drain it well. Mix together the flour and spice mix in a bag and shake well. Add the chicken pieces, one at a time, to coat them in the flour mixture. Lower the chicken into the fat one piece at a time, using tongs.  Start with the pieces with bone - the drum sticks and thigh pieces.  These will take about 20 to 30 minutes so add the breast pieces and small pieces such as the wings about half way through.  They will only take 10 to 15 minutes.

Make sure the temperature stays around 365°F/ 180°C and do not crowd the pot.

Fry the chicken pieces until they are golden brown, turning them occasionally. Transfer the done pieces to some kitchen paper. Remove any debris from the fat with a slotted spoon and keep frying the other chicken pieces. Serve hot or warm.

Coleslaw


1/2 Savoy cabbage, white part only, finely shredded
3 carrots, julienned on a Mandolin
1/2 Red onion, very thinly sliced
1/2 small Celeriac, julienned on a Mandolin
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon Dijon Mustard
Juice of one large lemon
Extra virgin olive oil

Mix the mustard with the lemon juice and some salt and pepper. Whisk well and slowly add olive oil, whisking all the time to amalgamate. You should have a creamy dressing. Use this to dress all the vegetables and check for seasoning to taste.

                         

Good Morning Vietnam

I can't seem to get enough of Vietnamese cooking at the moment.  I know I was banging on about it a couple of weeks ago when I made Pho Ga but since then I have added a couple more dishes to my repetoire. I think it is partly the Vietnamese use of mint which I am finding so appealing at the moment. Nothing says Spring to me like mint.  I don't know if it is its connection with Easter Lamb or the fact that it is one of the first sights of spring in my garden. From a completely barren wasteland it appears, year after year, from nowhere and before I know it I have a abundance of fresh green shoots with an aroma that is so utterly clean, like a new start. It is like Spring!


I don't actually like mint when it has been cooked.  It can be a little too reminiscent to toothpaste, but use it fresh like they do in the Middle East and in Asia and it is a different thing all together. Both of my recipes this week are just bursting with freshness and zing and guaranteed to wake you up after a sluggish winter and drag you kicking and screaming into Spring if the freezing weather has not managed to already.


First up, my Banh mi, a fabulous Vietnamese sandwich. It is so popular now a days that there is a whole website devoted just to the Bahn Mi sandwich, how to make it and where to eat it. It actually just means bread in Vienamese but since French colonisation it refers to a particular hybrid of French bread but less crusty and more sub like.  It is then filled with amongst other things roast pork, pate, chilli, mayonnaise, pickled carrot, mint and coriander. There is even a Breakfast Bahn mi, filled with bacon and eggs.  I am not actually a huge fan of roast or grilled pork, so when I discovered a Bahn mi with meatballs, I couldn't wait to give it a try.  I left the chilli out of my meatballs so that the kids can eat them too, so it makes a fantastic family lunch or supper, especially when it is warm enough to cook the meatballs on the barbecue.


My second recipe is for a Vietnemese Beef Salad.  This is just a really lovely fresh way to serve steak with a delicious vibrant salad.  Once again, a lovely recipe for the barbecue, but maybe wait until Summer. 

Banh Mi Xiu Mai (Vietnamese Meatball Sandwich)


For the Hot Chili and Garlic Mayo:
300ml Olive oil / sunflower oil, or a blend of the two
2 large egg yolks
1tsp Mustard (Dijon is my favourite)
Juice of half a lemon
3 fat cloves garlic
1 tablespoon hot chilli sauce (such as Sriracha)

For the Meatballs:
600g minced outdoor bread pork
3 garlic cloves
Large knob of fresh ginger, roughly chopped
1 stick of lemon grass, roughly chopped
3 spring onions, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fish sauce (Nam Pla or Nuoc Cham)
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

For the Pickled Carrot:
2 Carrots, pealed and julienned on a mandolin
1 daikon (Japanese white radish), pealed and julienned on a mandolin Optional
2 tablespoons unseasoned rice vinegar
2 tablespoons caster sugar
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt

For the sandwich:
4 10-inch-long individual baguettes or four 10-inch-long pieces French-bread baguette (cut from 2 baguettes)
Sunflower oil
Lettuce (I use baby gems)
Handful of fresh mint
Handful of fresh Coriander
Fresh lime

Hot Chili Mayo:
Thoroughly mash the garlic and a little salt into a paste. I use the side of my knife or you could use a pestle and mortar. Put the egg yolks in a small bowl with the mustard and a pinch of salt. Whisk well until thoroughly blended. Add the oil very slowly, to the egg mixture, whisking well after each addition. When all the oil has been incorporated, check seasoning and add lemon juice and chilli sauce to taste.

For the pickled Carrot / Daikon
Mix all ingredients and allow to infuse for 30 minutes.

For the Meatballs:
Whiz up the garlic, ginger and lemongrass with the fish sauce with a hand blender or in a small food processor, until you have a smooth paste. In large bowl, mix the mince with the paste, the spring onions and the salt and pepper. Using moistened hands roll the meat mixture into 1-inch meatballs. Fry gently in a little oil in a frying pan until golden brown and cooked through. Alternatively cook on the barbecue.

To assemble the sandwiches:
Cut each baguette or baguette piece horizontally in half. If using the barbecue, lightly char-grill. Spread with hot chili mayo. Pile in the lettuce, pickled carrot, meatballs and herbs. Add more chilli sauce if you like.

Vietnamese Beef Salad

500g sirloin steak, all fat removed
60ml sunflower oil, for frying

For the beef marinade:
2 sticks lemongrass, bashed and roughly chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp palm or caster sugar

For the dressing:
2 tbsp palm or caster sugar
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp lime juice
1 red chilli, de-seeded
2 garlic cloves
1/2 half tsp salt

For the salad:
100g rice vermicelli noodles
170g cos or baby gem lettuce, shredded
1 large carrot, peeled and julienned
70g cucumber, cut in half, de-seeded and cut into chunky 1/2 cm half-moons
Small handful Thai basil leaves (if available)
Handful picked coriander leaves
Handful of Fresh mint leaves
100g bean sprouts
100g roasted salted peanuts, lightly crushed
3 banana shallots, very thinly sliced
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely sliced
Salt

Blitz all the marinade ingredients with a hand blender to form a paste. Rub the paste all over the beef and set aside for a couple of hours at room temperature or in the fridge over-night. Meanwhile, make the dressing: Whiz up all the ingredients with a hand blender until smooth.

Heat an couple of inches of vegetable oil in a saucepan. When hot add the thinly sliced shallots and fry until golden brown. Stir regually and do not burn. Remove with a slotted spoon onto kitchen paper and sprinkle lightly with salt. (Alternatively you can find ready fried onions in Asian Supermarkets)

Now prepare the salad. Cook the noodles as instructed on the packet, drain and rinse under cold water. Toss the lettuce, carrot, cucumber, basil, coriander and bean sprouts in a large bowl. Add the chilli, the noodles and the dressing and mix well.

Heat the remaining oil in a frying pan or wok. Season the beef with salt and then sear the beef on each side for a minute or two. Then cook further until rare. Remove from the heat and allow to rest for a few five minutes or so. Slice thinly and scatter over the salad. Finally sprinkle over the fried shallots and the crushed peanuts.Serve at once.