Rare-cooked steak with herbs, leaves, roasted peanuts and a delicious lime and chilli dressing

A lime and chilli dressing is the final flourish on this easy dish.

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Edited by |Jus Mcmahon

 Food   section -  CJ journalist

 Cambodia  - April,2,2023

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There are two ways to make this.

The first is by ‘cooking’ the meat in a marinade (the lime juice does the cooking);

the second, is to cook the steak over a high heat – keeping it rare – and then add it to the dressing.

 

 Ingredients :

750g sirloin steak

100g salad leaves

15g Thai basil leaves, or regular basil if you can’t find Thai basil

15g mint leaves

100g shallots, very finely sliced

50g roasted peanuts, roughly

½ tsp Cambodian fish paste or Thai shrimp paste.

3 tbsp fish sauce

3½ tbsp lime juice

2 tbsp palm sugar or soft light brown sugar, or as needed

3 garlic cloves, very finely chopped

1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

½-1 tbsp hot water (optional)

Method : 

Trim the steaks of fat. Put the salad leaves, herbs and shallots into a broad, shallow serving bowl.

Make the dressing by mixing the fish paste, fish sauce and lime juice together in a bowl and whisking in the sugar. Add the garlic and chilli, and taste. You might want to add a little hot water to it (the dressing should be pretty strong). Adjust the sweetness if you want to.

Heat a non-stick frying pan until really hot. Pepper the steaks and cook them, on both sides, until the meat is a good golden-brown colour. Keep turning the steaks and moving them around the pan so you avoid the cool spots. The beef should be a good colour on the outside and rare on the inside.

Remove to a dish and cover with foil, tucking it around the edges. Rest for about 5 minutes.

Finely slice the steak and drop the slices into the dressing as you do so, along with any juices that come out. Don’t leave it in the dressing for too long or the steak will ‘cook’ more in the lime juice. Despite the salty dressing, you might want to season the steak a little. Add the steak to the leaves, pour on the dressing and sprinkle over the peanuts. Serve immediately.

 

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