Whip It Up - Warm Thai Noodle Salad

I finally had a chance to visit the asian supermarket near my house. Which makes me so very happy. The place is fabulous and sells Thai, Japanese, and Chinese ingredients, as well as some ready-made food (steam buns anyone?). I had been waiting to visit as I was pretty sure that I'd end up spending a fair amount of cash when I finally did go, but on my first trip I managed to behave myself reasonably well and came home with: fresh cilantro (corinder), buckwheat soba noodles, sesame oil, red Thai chilis, and fish sauce. All of which inspired me to make a warm Thai noodle salad. I was inspired by Thai Village Cafe's, Yum Nuea and, as I couldn't find a recipe on the internet, I invented my own.

The dish requires a reasonable amount of preparation, but is pretty easy. The biggest hassle is making sure the vegetables are sliced very fine.

Ingredients (serves 3):

• 1 red pepper
• 1 yellow pepper
• 2 spring onions
• 1 bunch cilantro
• 1 small red chili (optional)
• 250 grams good quality beef, thinly sliced
• 300 grams buckwheat soba noodles
• 2 tablespoons thai sweet chili sauce
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar
• 1 lemon

Slice the peppers and spring onions into a large bowl. These should be sliced very fine, and I used a vege peeler to slice them fine enough, but it could be done with a sharp knife. Chop the cilantro (no need to remove the leaves from the stems) into the bowl, and add the juice from the lemon, the thai sweet chili sauce, the fish sauce, and the brown sugar. Deseed and chop the chili (be sure to thoroughly was your hands after handling chilis).

Cook the soba noodles as instructed by the packet. My noodles required boiling for 12 minutes and then rinsing with hot water. While the noodles are cooking, heat the sesame oil in the frying pan and, once hot, add the beef. Quickly sear the beef for about 30 seconds on each side - you want the beef to be rare in the middle. Add the beef (along with the juices from the pan) and the soba noodles to the bowl of veges. Mix together and serve.

Just a couple of notes:

I suck at taking photos and the lighting in my kitchen is apparently overly green. In real life this looks (and tastes) much better than the picture suggests.

While I got my ingredients from the asian supermarket, they should all be available from any good supermarket. 

Soba noodles are a bit on the slimy side, so don't make this for anyone who has issues with slimy noodles.

Comments

[RA]

This salad looks great! I'm so jealous of your Asian foods market; our supermarket is woefully lacking in that area.

[nancypearlwannabe]

Yum! This looks like something I'd order at Wagamama's.

[nancypearlwannabe]

Yum! This looks like something I'd order at Wagamama's.

[Tammy]

This sounds quite yummy, I might try it with linquini instead.