A home cook’s inspiration to step outside of his or her typical recipe arsenal can come in several forms, whether it’s an interesting new ingredient, or a cookbook with delicious-sounding recipes from unfamiliar lands.
This dish is an excursion into the Vietnamese kitchen created by combining two cookbook recipes. Beef fillet in lime dressing sounded tempting, but nearly raw meat: not so much. And it was hard to ignore a recipe for stir-fried beef strips in a creamy sauce featuring sesame paste. The solution? Combine them.
This dish will join the usual weekday dinner rotation before you know it.
Vietnamese Sesame-Lime Beef
serves 2-3 people
Ingredients
- 500g beef fillet, thinly sliced
- 2 tbsp sesame oil
- 1-2 tsp sesame paste
- 1-2 tbsp sesame seeds
- 1 red chilli (seeds removed if preferred), thinly sliced
- cooked rice
Marinade
1 garlic clove, peeled and finely diced
1 1cm piece of ginger, peeled and finely diced
1 lemongrass stalk (white part only), finely chopped
3-4 fresh coriander stems, finely chopped
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 lime, zest and juice
1 tsp brown sugar
Method
1. Wash and pat dry meat. Combine all the ingredients for the marinade in a bowl. Add the meat and marinate for 2 hours.
2. Before cooking, remove the meat from the marinade and scrub off any bits left over from the marinade in order for the meat to cook better.
3. Heat oil in a pan and quickly sauté meat on high heat. The meat can still be a bit pink inside. Add the leftover marinade, sesame paste, sesame seeds and sliced chilli, bring to the boil, then let simmer until the marinade is warm and the meat is cooked as desired.
4. Scoop rice into the middle of a plate, then spoon over the sauce and cooked beef.
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