VIETNAMESE GRILLED BEEF & FRESH SPRING ROLLS

Surprise! I eat red meat. Although only once or twice a week, and not necessarily every week. I’m always trying to find ways to make red meat dishes more exciting and not too heavy, aside from the usual with-a-side-of-mash-potatoes or in some heavy, fatty curries. How I grew up, my family were not very heavy meat-eaters; most of our proteins come from the sea. When I was in boarding school we were served a lot of fried meat – they were tough, ghastly looking and quite frankly, traumatising.

So once in a while, if you feel like treating yourself, try a hand at making these Vietnamese grilled steak with a side of fresh vegetable spring rolls. The dipping sauce is the money here, sweet, sour, spicy and salty, and you’ll find yourself wanting to dip everything into it. Having fresh vegetable spring rolls makes it so much more guilt-free, and all these are best eaten while watching some sort of sword-fighting TV show; not sure why, but there is an excellent feel of butch-ness in the whole ritual of eating meat while watching people kill each other on the telly.

This serves a very hungry 1.

What You Need:
For the meat
1 good piece of lean steak
3 cloves garlic
1 stalk lemongrass
1 shallot
1 tbsp. honey
1 tbsp. fish sauce
1 tbsp. sesame oil
½ tbsp. sesame seeds
Salt and pepper

For the dipping sauce
1 tbsp. brown sugar, 2 tbsp. fish sauce, 2 tbsp. lime juice, 1 clove minced garlic, 1 minced bird’s eye chilli, Dash of water

For the fresh spring rolls
Rice paper (you can find them anywhere in large supermarkets)
Carrot, julienned
Cucumber, julienned
Lettuce, shredded
Coriander

What You Do:

1. For the meat marinade, blend all the ingredients together into a pulpy texture, add sesame seeds and marinade the beef for at least 30 minutes.
2. Combine all the ingredients for the dipping sauce. Check for taste. Set aside.
3. If you fancy some spring rolls, you can build some now. Dip the brittle rice paper into some room-temperature water and lay on a plate.
4. As the rice paper begins to soften, place some crunchy, raw vegetables in the centre of the paper and roll how you would a regular spring roll.
5. Don’t worry if they don’t look pretty, it’s all part of the rustic home cooking experience (or so I tell myself)
6. Put the grill pan on high heat. Once it starts smoking, place the meat onto it.
7. For medium rare, 2 minutes each side would do. Remove meat and let rest for 10 mins.
8. Slice thinly, serve with the remaining meat juices in the pan, your dipping sauce and fresh spring rolls.