This all began with a curry. A curry that was neither heavily spiced nor very hot. A curry that didn’t come from India or Thailand and that contained neither huge amounts of cumin nor coriander nor curry leaves. This curry made me look at it and say out loud, “What the hell makes this a curry?”

Goon, who as usual wasn’t interested in probing the definitions of various food types, looked at me suspiciously and said “Well, you make curry at least once a fortnight. You should know!”

But in spite of being brought up on curry, I didn’t know. This bothered me. After a short spree of looking through various dictionary definions, the vast majority of which were about grooming horses, I found the origins of the word curry. It is the Dravidian (that’s classical Tamil) word for ‘vegetable in sauce’. 

I think of all the curries I’ve made, possibly only a quarter involve vegetables in sauce. Have I been a terrible curry cook all this time?

I like to think not. I imagine what happened was that European settlers in India, who probably weren’t too keen on the whole veggie lifestyle, took the word they thought meant ‘generic vegetable stew’, turned it into the word that meant ‘generic stew with anything’ and expanded it  to mean ‘generic anything with spice that has an origins in Asia’**.

It’s an exceptionally wide definition and as I looked through the list of curries I’ve made in my short cooking life, I can see that even they are remarkably varied. There’s everything from the hot and pungent vindaloo to the delicate monkfish curry I made last night.

This dish was so delicate that it needed an accompaniment with kick so I made a sambal to go with it. A sambal is another thing that is hard to define. In short it is a side dish made with chilli or a hot pepper. In Sri Lanka the most popular ones seemed to be seeni sambal, (sweet onions with chilli) or pol sambal which is a bright orange dish made with dessicated coconut and chilli. The sambal I opted for was of Malaysian origin (to match the fish dish) and was made of pineapple and thinly sliced cucumber in a dressing of lime, shrimp paste and pounded red chilli. 

Malaysian Fish Curry with Sambal Nanas (for two generous portions)

• 400g monkfish fillet (or other firm white fish), cut into bite sized pieces
• 1 small onion, peeled and roughly chopped 
• 2 inch piece of ginger, roughly chopped
• 3 fat garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 2 red and two green chillies, deseeded and chopped
• A level tablespoon of flaked almonds, roughly crushed
• 2 lemongras staks, outer leaves removed, trimmed
• 3 heaped tablespooons dessicated coconut
• a pinch of turmeric
• 400g can coconut milk
• 100ml unherbed fish stock
• salt and pepper to taste
• chives or spring onion to garnish
• Plain boiled basmati rice to serve

For the Sambal

• 4 pineapple rings, chopped into small pieces.
• 1 quarter cucumber, sliced into short thin strips
• 1  teaspoon shrimp paste
• 20g dried shrimp
• 1 large red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
• brown sugar to taste

To make the sambal, use a food processor to blitz the dried shrimp, chilli, lime juice and shrimp paste. to pound the chilli and dried shrimp. REmove the mixture from the processor and mix well with the pineapple and cucumber slices. Add sugar and more lime juice to taste. Set aside while you prepare the curry.

1. Brush a medium saucepan with vegetable oil. Stir fry the dessicated coconut gently until it is a uniform golden brown. Scrape into a food processor and process to a smooth oily paste. I needed a touch of the coconut milk to help it alon.
2. Scrape the processed coconut into a bowl and rinse out the food processer.
3. Chop the lower halves of the lemon grass stalks roughly. Place the chopped lemongrass in the food processor with the onion, garlic, ginger, almond and three quarters of the chilli. Blitz to a smooth paste.
4. Brown the monkfish pieces briefly, remove from the saucepan .
5. Add the garlic paste to the pan and cook for afew minutes. Don’t let it brown. Then add the turmeric, coconut milk, remaining lemongrass and stock. Allow to reduce by half but don’t turn the heat up too high because coconut milk may curdle.
6. Return the fish to the pan with the dessicated coconut paste. Stir well and allow the fish to cook through (this should take about 5 minutes over a low/medium heat).
7. Taste, adjust seasoning and transfer to a serving bowl. Garnish with the remaining chillies and the chives. Serve with plain boiled rice.

*The corruption of words reminds me of ‘fish bisteck’. This is a Sri Lankan recipe my Dad used to try to impress me with when I was a teenager. The story goes that this was inspired by beef steak made by European settlers. Meat went off quickly in the hot weather, so beef steak was heavily spiced to disguise any gamey flavours. The locals picked up the idea and used the heavy spicing as a coating for fish  (Buddhists aren’t big on eating beef). Beef steak –> bisteck–> fish bisteck 

From the one or two encounters I had with fish bisteck I can promise that it was grim.  

Well, maybe not, but this is as close as I’m likely to get.

So here we have some beef fillet steak, seared until just cooked on the outside as an attempt at beef sashimi, a hot peanut dipping sauce, tangy mango and papaya salad with lots of lime and a soothing contrast of coconut rice.

Many of the best meals I have made have come from absolute necessity. The realisation that you have a couple of pounds left in your bank account and only a few storecupboard staples can work wonders for your cooking inspiration. It was a similar mindset I had when creating the meal above.

No, I’m not for a second pretending that anything in the meal pictured above is a budget item but, at the end of a particularly long and tiring week, they were almost all sitting in my fridge and the fillet steak in particular needed to be used fast.

So how did I come to have some ’spare’ fillet steak sitting in my fridge. Exhaustion, that’s how.

Parents’ evenings are always tiring. The parents’ evening of the upper sixth year is the last one before the kids sit their A2 exams that determine which university, if any, they can attend. When you teach BOTH bottom sets in a subject like mathematics, you know you’re in for a long evening that will involve dealing with some emotionally fruaght parents.

In a school like mine, you can be sure that not even the bottom set kids are going to fail their A2 maths. However they are mostly B and C grade candidates trying to get into some very good universities to read subjects like medicine and engineering. They REALLY need As  and Bs. Their parents by this point are getting more than a little anxious about their child’s future and in particular their apparently incurable inability to do any work. 

I actually had one parent, scratching his head and looking perplexed saying, “Well he’s never done any work. He’s not going to start now but he needs an A in maths. So how do we make sure he gets it?

Ummm…… tricky one…… getting me to dress like a boy and sit his exam might work but unfortunately that’s called fraud.

Anyway, after three and a half hours of trying to console around 20 pairs of very worried parents,  I left, just caught Sainsbury before it shut and grabbed some fillet steak. Then I got home and passed out on my sofa before I even thought about what I was going to do with it.

A few days later, the steak needed to be used. Fortunately I had a little more time on my hands so I made up a dish inspired by a salad I’d had at my favourite local Thai restaurant which conveniently used up some of the exotic fruit my parents sporadically give me.

 Beef ‘Sashimi’ with Mango and Papaya Salad, Coconut Rice and Peanut Dipping Sauce

Quantities for One Person

For the Beef

• 150-200g filet steak in one piece
• A little vegetable oil or groundnut oil
• Salt and pepper

Rub the steak with the oil so it is is just coated. Season with salt and pepper and sear over a high heat for 45s per side or until it is just cooked on the outside. Wrap in foil and leave to rest.

For the Rice

• 2 handfuls of basmati rice
• half a can of coconut milk (keep the rest handy in case you need some extra
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

Rinse the rice thoroughly in cold water. Bring the coconut milk to a boil, stir through the rice  with a teaspoon of salt and bring back to a gentle bubble. Stir frequently until the rice is cooked (about 8 minutes) - test a grain to see if it is cooked. Drain off any excess coconut milk and add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

For the Peanut Sauce

• 1 tablespoon unsalted peanut butter
• 1 chopped red chilli, deseeded
• a quarter can of coconut milk
• half a tablespoon chopped coriander leaf
• fish sauce- just a little

Combine the ingredients in a small saucepan and heat through for a few minutes until the peanut butter thickens the sauce. Taste and season.

For the Salad

• half a ripe mango, peeled and thinly sliced
• half an under-ripe (green) papaya, peeled, deseeded and thinly sliced
• juice of 1 lime
• a few drops of fish sauce
• half a teaspoon of sugar
• 1 small clove garlic, pasted
• 1 small green chilli, deeeded and finely chopped
• finely diced red onion- mi just used a heaped tablespoonful and kept the rest to use another time.
• a tablespoon of coriander leaves

Mix the fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, chilli and garlic paste. Toss this through the rest of the ingredients. 

Slice the beef fillet thinly and serve with the accompaniments.

(otherwise known as squid in a tomato and clove sauce, Indonesian style.)

West London really is the place to be at the moment. This morning I discovered that what appears to be the world’s biggest Waitrose has opened by Shepherd’s Bush Green along with 40 or so restaurants as part of the Westfield development.

This shopping centre is ludicrously large. I intended to ‘pop in’ today on my way into school to see what the fuss was about. Not only do you need a map for the development itself, individual shops are big enough to merit having their own complex floorplans. At one point I found myself looking diagonally across the centre so most of it was in my sight. It was so enormous, I had a slight attack of vertigo, felt a bit sick and had to leave. Then it took me 15 minutes to get to the exit.

Yes it is THAT big. So big that, if it wasn’t for Wholefoods, it would render Kensington High Street totally redundant. So here I am, nestled in between cheap restaurants, the best butcher in London and a gargantuan shopping centre. This is my smug face.

Goon has become a bit disconcerted at my sudden good mood. I suppose that from his point of view, his girlfriend has undergone a complete personality transformation, from grumbling and snarling to generally quite happy. If it wasn’t for BT, I would only have one other complaint: the seemingly endless stream of colds.

Colds are an occupational hazard for teachers, particularly when they’re new to a school. I can’t remember a day this term when we (the maths department, that is) were all sniffle free. Germs like children and children like giving their germs to teachers. Fortunately I know the best thing to treat a cold: a big bowl of curry.

I have more than made up for last year’s lack of curry making and have been trying to expand my repetoire. The dish below originates in Indonesia and is lightly spiced and not at all hot. It’s perfect if you want something pleasantly invigorating but aren’t in the mood for a chilli based assault on the senses. It’s so mild that you might not class it as a curry, but it hit the spot for me, especially after the burningly hot Thai curry I made the previous night. It’s quick to make too, so a perfect schoolnight dinner.

Cumi Cumi Smoor (for 2 big portions)

• 400g of squid, cleaned, hoods cut into strips, 
• the juice of a lime 
• 1 onion, peeled and finely diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 plum tomatoes, peeled and chopped  
• 8 whole cloves
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 150ml unherbed fish or vegetable stock or water
• plain boiled rice or saffron rice to serve
• chopped coriander/ sliced spring onion to garmish

1. Get a large frying pan hot and stir fry the squid until it just curls up. Remove it from the pan, place it in a bowl, toss in the lime juice, cover and keep warm.
2. Turn the heat down to low, add a little more oil, then add the onion and garlic to the pan and cook gently until soft.
3. Add the tomato, stock, cloves and nutmeg. Stir well, ten allow to bubble gently until almost dry. Taste and season.
4. Stir in the squid and warm through.
5. Serve with saffron rice or plain boiled rice, garnished with chopped coriander and/or spring onion.

******

Finally we’re out of budget zone. It’s been a gruelling 8 months, believe me. Goon has finally found a job, meaning my salary is now just for me and, as descibed in an earlier post, I won’t be putting down my flat deposit until after I get my final pay from Highgate, meaning everything has settled down.

Last weekend, Goon came back from his cousin’s weddng looking very smug with the news that a company in Baker Street had accepted him as their desktop support man. He filled me in on the details.

“They’re giving you how much!?!!” Goon looked smug as he repeated his salary. “You’re straight out of University! You technically don’t have a degree yet!” 
“Good, isn’t it?”
“But I know people with PhDs that earn less than that!”
Goon thought for a second. “Yes!” he said. “Like you!” Goon stuck his tongue out at me.
“I don’t count!” I replied indignantly. “I’m in for love not money. Plus, given that I work 35 weeks a year, I’m still paid at a better rate.”
 ”Even including my bonuses?”
“You get a bonus?” Goon nodded and looked even more smug. “Wait. You have no degree result. Given you attended precisely 4 lectures during your 3 year course, I don’t want to see your degree result. This is your first job, and they are offering you that much money!?”
“ I have experience.”

I sat bewildered for a second.

“That tinkering you did instead of going to school counts as experience?”
 ”Yep. Enought to earn me more than you!” I shook my head in disbelief.
“No wonder the economy’s collapsing.” Goon snarled at me.
“So how much is this bonus of yours going to be?”
“Twenty percent if all goes well…. so…. ummmm…..” Goon thought hard and scratched his head. “What do you get when you divide my salary by four?

I ran his last sentence through my head again.

“Are you sure they haven’t confused you with one of the other applicants?”

At that, Goon decided he’d taken enough abuse and went downstairs to eat some celebratory cream cakes. I took a minute to get over the news that Goon was going to be better paid than me (I am clearly in the wrong business) and then started looking for places to host a celebratory dinner.

Now he has a job and can therefore stay in London, it is certain that Goon will be living on his own next year. There’s no way he wants to go back to eating tuna rice again so I have bought him a wok and a wok book.

Goon LOVES his wok. It really is the ideal cooking tool for someone like him. He probably won’t do the most exciting cooking with it but he’ll feed himself more healthily than he used to. Admittedly I bought the book primarily for its inclusion of pictures (Goon won’t use a book without pretty pictures) but, from what I’ve seen so far, the recipes are ideal for him. There’s lots of easy dishes taking less than half an hour to cook and, on the off chance he gets more adventurous, more challenging material too. Or, more likely, I’ll just use the challenging mateial when I visit. 

On Sunday he had his first lesson: chicken with satay sauce.

Easy Chicken in Satay Sauce (adapted from The Essential Wok Cookbook, Murdoch Press, various authors- serves 2)

• 400g chicken breast, cut into thin slices
• 2 limes
• salt and pepper
• peanut oil or vegetable oil for frying 
• 4 spring onions
• 1 heaped tablespoon red curry paste (from a jar if you’re like Goon, made from scratch if you’re like me)
• 2 heaped tablespoonfuls peanut butter
• 200ml coconut milk 
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• Steamed rice to serve and perhaps some vegetables stir fried with ginger, garlic and soy
• Chopped coriander to garnish (optional)

1. Toss the chicken strips with the juice of one lime and some salt and pepper. Leave to stand for ten minutes.
2.  Slice the spring onions into 1cm lengths on the diagonal.
3. Put a teaspoon of oil in the wok, swirl to coat and get the wok hot. Stir fry the onion until starting to soften. REmove from the pan and set aside
4. Shaking off any excess lime juice, add half the chicken to the wok and stir fry until they are golden brown in patches. Remove from wok and set aside, repeat with the rest of the chicken.
5. Add the curry paste, coconut milk and peanut butter to the wok, stir to combine well.
6. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.
7. Adjust the heat so the sauce is bubbling gently. Let it reduce until it coatss your spoon thickly.
8. Retuen the chicken and spring onion to the wok and cook for 2-3 minutes until the choicken is hot all the way through.
9. Just before serving, stir in the juice of half the remaining lime
10. Serve with steamed rice, a vegetable side dish, garnished with the remaining lime cut into wedges and chopped coriander.

Recipe Notes: I think marinading the chicken in a full on lime juice, lime zest, peanut oil, ground cumin and ground coriander marinade would make this better. But Goon is unlikely to have those ingredients next year, so we kept it simple.

*************

Goon has learnt several lessons from this.

1. It takes ages to season a wok.
2. Stirring too vigorously makes satay sauce fly across the room. If another person is in the room with you, it may land in her hair and then she may start hitting you with a frying pan.
3. Woks heat up quickly and thick sauces can cling to the edges and burn if the heat is too high. You must keep the temperature moderate and scrape down any sauce that is clinging to the sides of the wok.
4. Always read a recipe through from beginning to end before starting. Otherwise you will realise half way through that you actually need a side plate and someone to make some rice very quickly.

I also learned something: It is harder to cook a simple side dish and steam some rice while supervising a Goon than it is to prepare a 3 course meal for four people. Still the result was good, especially given the short list of ingredients and the relatively short cooking time.   The only problem was that the chicken itself lacked flavour despite being decent free range meat. A marinade in spices as suggested in the note may help this. The book didn’t even call for a lime juice, salt and pepper mix.

Goon will have another turn at cooking on Monday. Perhaps something with beef this time and I may get him to do ALL the cooking, including side dishes.

This post is really testing my memory. I was just going through my food photos from this year and foud a picture of a curry that I really wanted to post but never had time.

A whole 18 weeks ago, just before the end of the Easter holidays, I was contemplating what my final term at Highgate would bring. Late nights I suspected and bad moods at arriving home hungry and exhausted at 9:30pm. I had been ill prepared for these in the previous two terms. People kept telling me it would get easier and I’d cope better as I went along. It was true to some extent, but if I was to keep preparing a full worksheet for every lesson, leaving school before 7:30 wouldn’t be an option.

We decided that, in order to fend off the near psychotic rages that had ensued when Goon had promised to cook dinner but forgotten, it would be a good idea to stock up the freezer with home made ready meals. Goon exercised his training from the previous year and made a vat of bolognese which divided into 10 portions. I went down to Sainsbury’s and discovered that they had free range pork and stewing beef on offer. The beef became 6 frozen portions of beef in Guinness. The pork became the slightly psychadelic curry pictured above.

This is a Cambodian Style pork and butternut squash curry. The intense yellow flavour comes from the use of turmeric and a herbal paste called Kroeung, which is made from blending lemongrass, turmeric, ginger or galangal, onion, lime leaf and garlic.

The paste here is a lot wetter than normal, because I only have a crappy stick blender and so needed a bit of water to process the spices.

Kroeung is a classic flavouring in Khmer cooking and quite distinctive, being earthy and yet fresh and citrusy at the same time. It provides the principal flavouring to many curries, soups, stir fries and marinades. It certainly dominated this curry, providing a nice balance to the creaminess of the coconut milk.

I’m afraid I can’t remember exact quantities for this curry but the method went something like this…

Cambodian Pork and Butternut Curry (Adapted from The Complete Vietnamese Cookbook by Ghillie Basan)

Approximate method for making 8-10 Portions

For the Kroeung Paste, process

• 3 chopped lemon grass stalks, trimmed with the tough outer leaves removed
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 8 garlic cloves, minced
• 4 fresh kaffir lime leaves
• a large piece of ginger (25g)
• 25g fresh turmeric (I had to substitute around 4 teaspoons ground)

with a little water if necessary to bind. This paste will keep for up to a week in the fridge.

Now for the curry…

The recipe suggests using pork loin but we had a 1.6kg boneless leg. This was cut into bite size pices and browned in batches over a high heat.

Stir fry a large knob (4-5 inches) of finely chopped ginger, 8 chopped green chillies and 2-3 very finely diced onions in some vegetable oil until the onion is soft. Add 6 tablespoons of the kroeung paste and stir fry for a couple of minutes. Throw in a 3 or 4 teaspoons of ground turmeric and a couple of teaspoons each of fenugreek and sugar and stir fry for a minute or so. Now add the pork loin and stir to coat. Add a couple of tablespoons of fish sauce, two tins (approx 1 litre) of coconut milk and bring to a gentle bubble. After 5 minutes or so add the diced flesh of 2 small butternut squash and 5 or 6 lime leaves. Allow to bubble until the squash is almost cooked. Adjust spicing at this stage if necessary. Continue to cook until the pork and squash are cooked through.

The portions we ate that night were garnished liberally with chopped coriander and mint and served on plain boiled rice. The other six portions went in the freezer and were almost equally good when reheated, although the squash disintegrated a bit.

********************

This was the first time I’d encountered this herbal paste, so it seems like a good idea to enter this post to Kalyn’s long standing event, Weekend Herb Blogging.  It must have been a year since I last took part but hopefully I can make more entries soon.  The host this week is Kelly from Sounding my Barbaric Gulp. Visit her site on Monday for a round up of educational and entertaining posts.

Apparently the paste I used is just one of a several different types of Kroeung. Variations include adding red chilli pulp, making the paste red or rhizome, making it a light green. Most pastes include lemongrass, galangal and turmeric or kaffir lime leaves, giving Khmer cooking its distinctive flavour.  

More detail is here at the Wikipedia page on Kroeung.

A little while back I told you about my new job up in Highgate School. Time is certainly passing quickly and, with just a few weeks left before I start work, it’s time Goon and I found a new place to live.

Of course, the most important thing for me in a flat is a decent kitchen, not like the one we have now. I want worksurface space, a gas cooker and a freezer that’s big enough to hold more than just some ice cubes and a bag of peas. Goon just wants somewhere close to a tube station so he can minimise the time he spends on his feet. Sadly,even finding this combination has so far proved nearly impossible. 

It seems that a place to cook is a luxury in London now. With landlords rapidly converting every period building into 4 apartment blocks, we’ve seen many places with decent bedrooms but poor cooking and living space. We found several conversions which would have been fine but, all they had in the ‘open plan kitchen-lounge’ was one of those ghastly electric hobs and a sink. Not even a table to prep ingredients. How depressing. 

It was after seeing one of these conversions that we encountered what must be the most stupid bunch of letting agents in London. In desperation we had popped into a slightly dodgy looking agency in the vague hope of discovering a suitable flat. We were prepared for some scare tactics and a little bit of bending the truth in a place like this, but we weren’t quite ready for this level of idiocy.

“Oh, yes, this place is going to go VERY quickly,” said the young lady showing us around a particularly expensive one bed dump, “In fact we had a couple in today who wanted it right away.”

 Now, despite the impression he gives during his kitchen misadventures, Goon isn’t stupid.”So why didn’t they put down a deposit?” he asked. She paused for quite a while.

“Uh…….because…….. they left their cashcard at home. They’ll be coming in specially tomorrow all the way from….uh… Wimbledon….so they’re very keen. If you want it, you’d need to put down the cash before they came back.” I rolled my eyes. As if anyone in their right mind would want that place for that price. I took over the debate, somewhat sarcastically.

 ”Well, if we want this place, I’ll be sure to run over with the cash first thing tomorrow.” The agent looked worried.

Back at their offices, Goon was having fun winding another agent up.”So, that couple from Greenwich, they really like the place, huh?”
The agent looked confused for a second.”Couple from…oh.. RIGHT the couple from Greenwich, yes they were…”

“Wimbledon!”  The other agent interjected in a hurry. ”Remember? They were from Wimbledon?” She nodded encouragingly at him. I, frankly, couldn’t believe how bad this woman was at lying.

“Ah, yes, Greenwich, Clapham… these places South of the river are all the same to me.” He laughed nervously. His colleague gave him a look that could kill.

And, as if they hadn’t made big enough fools out of themselves already, the estate agents called back the next morning with this little gem.

AGENT:The couple interested in the flat have come back. Do you want the flat,because we’ll need the money today if you do.
GOON: What, they’re in the office now?
AGENT Yes.
GOON: Ready to put the money down?
AGENT: That’s right.
GOON:  And you’re asking me if we want the flat?
AGENT: Ummm…. yes? 
GOON: How could we possibly put the money down before them if they’re already there?
AGENT Umm… right.

(long pause)

AGENT: If they don’t put the money down now, shall I call you back?

Goon hung up.

So we spent Saturday tramping around again and by the evening we were tired and hungry and in need of some comforting and invigorating food. It was still very  hot  so it needed to be reasonably light and refreshing too. Plus I was knackered. So I didn’t want anything to keep me on my feet for more than an hour.

I was thinking a warm salad with some spicy, citrusy flavours would be good, perhaps with a South East Asian Influence. So I started improvising and out came this.

Vietnamese Style Noodle Salad with Seared Marinated Beef

For The Beef  (we used around 425g beef fillet for two of us)

• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 1/2 tablespoons ground nut oil
• 1 heaped teaspoon brown sugar
• 1 large garlic clove, minced
• 1 inch ginger root, grated
• a spring onion, thinly sliced
• 3 small green chillies,chopped (don’t mention this to Goon!)

Mix all the marinade ingredients together well in a bowl. 

Cut the beef fillet into thin strips, about  a centimetre wide. Toss them in the marinade and leave them to marinate for about 90 minutes, tossing them every half hour to make sure the marinade stays well distributed. While the beef is marinating, make the salad (below), then have a sit down.

Once the beef has finished marinating, get a frying pan very hot and sear the beef strips for around 40s per side (or until the outside is cooked). You may need to do this in batches. Place the beef strips on a warm plate and cover with foil. Leave to rest for about 5 minutes.

Arrange the beef over or around the noodle salad, squeeze over some more lime and garnish with chopped coriander if you like.

For the salad (intended for 2 but enough for 3)

• 1 carrot, peeled and cut into little 3 inch long, narrow batons.
• 4 inches of cucumber, cut like the carrot or maybe a bit thicker.
• 1 small pointed red pepper, deseeded cut the same as the carrot
• 3 spring onions, sliced 
• 250g of fine rice noodles,
• handful of peanuts, roasted
• handful coriander leaves roughly chopped
• 10-15 mint leaves, finely chopped
• juice from 1 1/2 limes and grated zest to taste
• A little salt
• enough groundnut oil to lightly coat the rice noodles.

cook the rice noodles according the the pack instructions, then drain andrefresh in cold water immediately. i find that this stops them overcooking and disintegrating. Then drain the noodles and toss them in the oil and lime juice to stop them sticking. 

Then just throw in the rest of the ingredients and toss everything together until its thoroughly mixed. Gently warm the salad through, then taste and  adjust seasoning.

***

This was quick, tasty and filling without being heavy. Goon loved the marinated beef but he seems to be less keen on the fresh chopped mint in this form. personally i think its great. I find the combination of lime, coriander and mint to be really refreshing.

That meal  was exactly what we needed after a hard day of flat hunting. I just keep hoping that eventually we’ll find our perfect kitchen flat, preferably BEFORE my new job starts.