beef Archives - Egg Wan's Food Odyssey

Mango and Beef Rice Noodle Salad

by Liv | Oct 2, 2016

Rice noodles are a very popular ingredient not only in Chinese cuisine but also in many other different Asian countries. You can stir-fry them, add them into a soup and you can also make a delicious rice noodle salad with all kinds of different ingredients.

So today I’m sharing with you this delicious sweet and sour “mango and beef rice noodle salad” recipe. This recipe is not an authentic “Chinese” recipe as such but I was inspired by the flavours of South Eastern Asian cuisine for this dish. If yu’re not a fan of beef then you can replace it with chicken, pork or even different kinds of seafood including mussels, prawns, fish, crabmeat and more.

I soak the rice noodles in cold water for around 15 minutes to soften them before I blanch them in boiling water. This will help the rice noodles to cook better. If you like your rice noodles a bit softer then just cook them a little longer in the boiling water. Equally if you like your noodles a little al dente, cook for less time. You can also have a look at this article to get information on how to cook different kinds of Chinese/Asian noodles. “Asian Noodles-types of Asian noodles and cooking time”.

You can also use different vegetable for this dish. You don’t have to stick with carrots, mung beans sprouts or bok choy. You can add pepper, napa cabbage, spring onion, salad leaves or different kind of bean sprouts. I would personally stick with using mango for this dish rather than other kind of fruit. Because this dish needs the smell and taste of mango to give it a kick.

I will use lean beef for stir-fry or minute steak in this dish. You can also use sirloin or other parts of the beef if you fancy. You can also adjust the amount of seasonings to suit your personal taste.

This is a dish I make very often at home because it’s just so easy to make. It’s also delicious and full of nutrition from all the vegetables, meat and fruit.

A bit of update with my life:

Since I graduated from university and quit my part time job, I have been super busy. My illustration business has turned really busy and I literally have never been this busy before. For example, this month I’m working on 6 projects with 2 projects at the beginning of the month, 2 projects are my regular monthly work and I have another 2 projects to work on at the end of the month. So I’m juggling all of these projects, this food writing job, family and of course my food blog. This is why, especially now, that I’m focusing a lot on “weeknight dinners” and “life saving recipes for a career mom” type of recipes. Chris, my husband, is out almost all the time with either work or college so he never has time to cook so right now we’re having ready meals and takeaways at least a couple nights each week.

But I’m not complaining at all! I love being busy and I love working in my dream job! I love working as an illustrator and I’m over the moon with my illustration business booming as it is now. I feel like all the hard work, studying and looking after my family in the past 5 years is finally paying off. Now I just need to find more time to cook for my food blog, so wish me luck!

5 from 1 vote

Mango and Beef Rice Noodle Salad

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes

Total Time 35 minutes

Servings 3 people

Ingredients

280 g lean beef julienne it
125 g rice noodle
140 g mango julienne it
85 g carrot julienne it
85 g mung bean sprouts remove the roots
85 g bok choy julienne it

Marinade for beef

2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp potato starch or corn flour
1 tsp rice wine
Pinch ground cumin
Pinch ground black pepper

Ingredients for dressing

1/2 tbsp mint chopped
1/2 tbsp basil chopped and preferably Thai basil
1 clove garlic
1 chili remove seed and finely chopped
3 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp water
1/2 lime juice only
1/2 tbsp demerara sugar or caster sugar

Instructions

Mix all the ingredients for the dressing in a small bowl and leave aside.
Soak rice noodles in cold water to soften them first.
Marinade beef for at least 30 minutes.
Boil a medium saucepan of water and blanch carrot and mung bean spouts. Cool down in ice water immediately. Drain and leave aside.
Use the same water to blanch the rice noodles for 3-5 minutes. You can adjust the time in which you blanch the noodles if you want them softer or more al dente. This is entirely up to you.
Soak the rice noodles in cold water to cool down immediately. Drain and leave aside.
Heat up 1 tablespoon of oil in a skillet or wok and stir-fry the beef for 30 seconds. Turn off the fire and leave aside.
Mix all the ingredients with some dressing evenly. Season with some salt if need it. Ready to serve.

Green Papaya and Sirloin Salad

by Liv | Jul 12, 2016

Nothing is better on a hot summer day than a big delicious bowl of salad. This green papaya and sirloin steak salad isn’t exactly an authentic Chinese or Taiwanese dish but it’s more like an Asian inspired salad dish that I really like.

As I live in Scotland, we don’t really get any “summer”, at least not the kind of summer that I was used to when I lived in Taiwan or China. In China and Taiwan, the temperature can reach a sweltering 38 degrees or even hotter but in Scotland right now the temperature is around 16 degrees.

I’m still wearing long sleeves as for me it’s still a bit cold. Chris and I were talking about eating hot pot soon as recently it’s been raining quite a lot and every time it rains the temperature drops. Sometimes the temperature can be as low as 8 degrees in Edinburgh on a summer day.

For this you can replace the cucumber, onion and even green papaya for other vegetables such as carrots, tomatoes, peppers and celery. You can even try to add in apple or Asian pear if you wish. I improvise my cooking a lot of the time as there are so many ingredients from the East I simply can’t get hold of in the UK so after years of living in Edinburgh I have learnt to improvise and adapt my food to the ingredients I can get here.

Also, please feel free to adjust the seasonings for the marinade and sauce. If you want the sauce to be more sour then add more lemon but if you want to cut down the amount of salt you eat then leave the salt out of the sauce.

I garnished this dish with some chopped mint. Mint is hot a herb we usually use in Chinese cuisine but as explained earlier this is an Asian influenced dish so I added mint because I think the flavour of the mint compliments this dish perfectly.

If you are not a fan of red meat, you can use chargrill chicken or pork instead of the steak. You can also use prawn or fish to replace the steak and you can even use horseradish instead of wasabi to give the dish a different kind of flavour.

I didn’t use a lot of wasabi in this recipe because I worry maybe it’s too strong for some people’s tastes but I personally really enjoy that special kick the wasabi gives to this recipe so personally I put a lot of wasabi in this dish when I make it at home.

Green Papaya:

You can purchase green papaya in local Chinese/Asian supermarket or Amazon.

You can also use green papaya make a soup. Check out my recipe for green papaya soup on about.com.

To learn about all health benefits of papaya check out this article: http://www.well-beingsecrets.com/papaya-health-benefits/

Green Papaya and Sirloin Salad

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 1 hour

Total Time 1 hour

Servings 3 people

Ingredients

700 g sirloin steak
200 g green papaya julienne
70 g cucumber julienne
85 g onion julienne
1 chili remove seeds and julienne
Mint just for garnish

Marinade for sirloin steak

1.5 tbsp light soy sauce
1/2 tsp salt
2 pinches coarse black pepper
1/2 tbsp demerara sugar

Ingredients for sauce

1/4 tsp wasabi
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp fish sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp light soy sauce

Instructions

Marinade the sirloin stead for 30 minutes. If you have time leave it to marinade longer.
Mix all the ingredients for the sauce evenly and leave aside.
Mix the julienned green papaya with a couple pinches of salt and leave it aside for at lease 10 minutes.
Chargrill the steak to how you like it then leave it aside to cool down.
Mix all the vegetables together and place on a serving plate.
Slice steak and put on top of the step 5.
You can pour the sauce on top of the steak or pour the sauce on top of the green papaya salad as you wish.
Garnish the dish with some chopped mint and grilled lemon. Ready to serve.

Chinese Daikon Carrot and Tomato Beef Stew

by Liv | Oct 10, 2014

Chinese Daikon Carrot and Tomato Beef Stew. One day while back in Taipei, I was watching TV with my grandmother and smelt this really awesome dish coming out of a neighbour’s home. So I asked grandma to make this dish for me. I know people might think I’m horrible asking my grandmother to cook for me but grandma is a very old fashioned traditional Eastern lady.

Few things make her happier than cooking a big meal for her family. She loves cooking for he children and grandchildren and when we say something along the lines of “Oh grandma, the food you made is so DELICIOUS! We love it!” you can often here her giggling. For a lot of older Eastern ladies, most of them are housewives their whole lives. They sacrifice themselves to their family and children so the “kitchen” is their stage. When my grandmother came to the UK in 2012 she brought her rubber gloves with her and when she was cutting vegetables she refused to let me help her, even though I’m a trained chef. This kind of thing always makes me laugh.

I cook most of the meals at home for my husband and daughter but a lot of times I really don’t know what to cook. I’m used to people ordering food from me at work so I guess this carries over at home so I usually present Chris with the question “Eastern or Western food” “noodles or rice?” then I have a pretty good idea about what to cook. I believe for a lot of mums who cook most of the food at home they must have the same feeling so whenever I go back to Taipei I always prepare a “list” of food for my grandma or my mum. This way everyone is extremely happy.

While I was back in Taipei recently dealing with the death of my father, I was away from home sorting things out and grandma, being the cute old lady she is, even phoned me to ask me if I want her to put tomatoes in this beef stew she was cooking. I told her to cook it anyway she likes, which she will really love hearing but in all honesty the addition of tomato was perfect. It made the beef stew less fatty/greasy. I cooked a very similar dish in my cookbook without tomato and I have to admit this recipe tastes so much better.

So this is my grandmother’s recipe for Chinese Daikon, carrot and tomato beef stew:

Chinese Daikon, Carrot and Tomato Beef Stew

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 2 hours

Total Time 2 hours 15 minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

1 kg beef flank or shin or any slow cook beef, cut into big dice
480 g vine tomato chop roughly
120 g onion or 1 medium size onion, chop roughly
10 g ginger slice thin
200 g carrot peel and slice 2cm thick
600 g daikon peel, slice 2cm thick and cut into quarters
1 ltr boiling water

Seasonings

200 ml light soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
70 ml rice wine
2 star anise
1/4 cinnamon stick you could add tangerine peel for extra flavour

Instructions

Boil a big pot of water and add the beef. Boil for 5 minutes to clean any dirt off the beef. After 5 minutes, use cold water to wash away any dirt on the surface of the meat and drain the water. Leave the beef aside for later
Heat up 2 tablespoons of oil and stir-fry the ginger and onion until the fragrance comes out. Add the beef and stir-fry for another 3-5 minutes
Pour the rice wine in and cook for 30 seconds. Add light and dark soy sauce and boil
After step 3 has boiled, add tomato, water, star anise, cinnamon stick and tangerine peel (optional)
Cook for 1.5 hours. The beef should be nearly soft and then add the carrots and daikon. Cook until the carrots and daikon are soft. Check the seasonings to suit your taste before serving

Hi, I'm Liv

Illustrator by day, home cook by night. For years I was a professional chef but now I draw and cook for myself

Follow my blog for easy to make recipes, how-to's and ideas to gather the family at the dinner table!

Mango and Beef Rice Noodle Salad

Mango and Beef Rice Noodle Salad

Ingredients

Marinade for beef

Ingredients for dressing

Instructions

Green Papaya and Sirloin Salad

Green Papaya and Sirloin Salad

Ingredients

Ingredients

Marinade for sirloin steak

Ingredients for sauce

Instructions

Chinese Daikon Carrot and Tomato Beef Stew

Chinese Daikon, Carrot and Tomato Beef Stew

Ingredients

Ingredients

Seasonings

Instructions

Hi, I'm Liv

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