Waterfall Beef Salad, take two.

I made my own version of the Waterfall Beef Salad from Food Safari Thailand a couple of weeks ago and the flavours have been on my mind ever since.

We went to Sydney last weekend on a crazy visit for a friends' wedding (when I say crazy I mean crazy, we left Brisbane at 12:30 on Friday afternoon, got to Sydney at 2:30am local time, the wedding was at 3pm on Saturday but it was an hour away and somehow I managed to squeeze in a market between the 1 1/2 hour round trip to Mosman and we left to come back to Brisbane at 7:00am on Sunday morning to get home at 7:30pm in time for a good sleep before starting work the next day at 7:00 am. Phew!!) and after the busy weekend DD didn't not feel up to grocery shopping. After I explained to him that we had no food and had to go shopping, he appeased me by offerring to take me to James St to pick up a few things. I can never say no to a trip to James St.

At the butcher in the James St Market we picked up this huge piece of sirloin steak. It was nearly a 1kg piece! I put this to good use in another Waterfall Beef Salad.

This time it worked a little better. Rather than a herby marinade, this did look like a salad. I severely cut down the amount of fish sauce at the beginning, which meant I didn't have to add the huge amounts of sugar after to get a nice balance of flavours. I also had managed to track down some Thai glutinous rice (at an Indian food store!) and cooked it according to the fabulous microwave directions from ThaiTable.com.


It was just as good the second time around, if not better because of the added authenticity with the sticky rice. This is just a wonderfully flavoured light dish. I loved the sticky rice too, it was such a nice change from normal basmati, and it really worked in the salad. I didn't roll it with my hands like they did on Food Safari, but I still managed to get a bit of everything on my fork.

Waterfall Beef Salad
adapted from Thai Food Safari

1 giant piece sirloin steak
3 tsp fish sauce
3 1/2 tbs fresh lime sauce
1 tsp palm sugar
3 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs finely chopped coriander
2 spring onions, finely chopped
1 large shallot, finely sliced
handful of mint leaves
3 tbs toasted ground rice

Toasting the rice:
Put 1/3 cup of jasmine rice, 2 kaffir lime leaves and a stalk of lemongrass in a large flat pan and toast over high heat until the rice goes golden brown, keeping the ingredients moving constantly. Ground the rice in a spice grinder. (I have a spice grinder now, it was much easier than using the stick blender)

Cook the steak, ideally to medium-rare on a heavy based pan with no oil, and slice carefully into thin strips.

Mix the fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar and soy sauce until the sugar has dissolved. Add the beef strips. Add the coriander, spring onions, onion, mint leaves and ground rice and mix well.