Yum!

Hello dear friends,

I've been a bad blogger lately. I know I rarely talk about my personal life but for those who don't know me personally, I'm completing a graduate program this week and I've been rather busy—well--doing that. But I've missed you, as I hope you've missed me. Now that you can call me Faux Gourmet, Esquire, I'm back with a vengeance . . . until prepping for the bar sends me back into a cave for a few weeks in July. But before & after that I'm all yours, so please resume your habit of checking What's in the Pot? blog regularly!

Thanks for your patience while I took a needed hiatus. I look forward to celebrating the joy of eating & exploring good food on the cheap once again.

The Faux Gourmet

“I ordered the Yum Neuah but yours was better.”

Taste & See:  In honor of my dear friend, D, who is soon to move away from our great city back to the barren wilderness from whence he came, I present for you one of his favorite recipes—that is, one of his favorite things to have me cook: Yum Neuah (new-ah). I know. With a name like “yum!” how can you go wrong? Yum Neuah is a Thai beef salad, kind of like a deconstructed beef burrito, sans carbs & replacing Mexican spices with Thai spices. Ok, maybe it's not that similar to a beef burrito. Maybe, simple, fresh & healthy recipe that it is, Yum Neuah is far superior.

D sometimes tells me when he's had Thai food, “I ordered the Yum Neuah but yours was better.” That may be a bit of nostalgia speaking more than, say, an bite-to-bite taste test analysis, but I'll take it. I did learn from the best, after all. My most memorable Yum Neuah experience involved a Hmong wedding in the north of Thailand where almost every last part of an entire cow (and two pigs) were slaughtered, butchered and transformed into myriad beefy recipe. The women sat at long picnic tables, peeling bags of garlic, chopping lemongrass and green onions, and pounding chilies for an hour. The most magical concoction of all was an enormous vat of glistening chunks of beef into which a potpourri of spices and sauces were churned. A bit of time on the grill and the Yum Neuah meat fairly danced in the mouth, popping with complex notes of flavor, as Thai food is wont to do.

You don't have to kill your own cow to make good Yum Neuah, however. D, if you should desire to impress your new friends, just follow along. Before you know it, they'll be sending you texts about how much better your Yum Neuah is.

Do it Yourself

Yum Neauh involves three steps, each of which is fairly easy. The hardest part is figuring out proportions that create a flavor that works for you. The trick in Thai food is balance- a harmonious blend of salty, sweet, sour and spicy. I give you estimates (for a 4 person meal) so the rule-bound cooks among us don't get too worried, but it is really best if you experiment. Don't be afraid to pour and shake using your eye instead of measuring cup, and when it comes to chopping veggies, go with however much of each you want to eat. There is no formula. Just take heart that with these ingredients as your raw materials, it is hard to make the food taste bad, and if you do, they're cheap enough you can try, try again.

Ingredients

Meat: About one pound rump or sirloin steak

Meat marinade:
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 square inch ginger, chopped
1 bunch cilantro (coriander) roots, washed and chopped
3 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp ground black pepper

Dressing:
4 Tbsp fish sauce (like salt in baking, fish sauce doesn't give a fishy or salty flavor but simply helps to enhance other flavors)
4 Tbsp lime juice
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp chili flakes (more if you like it hot; also consider chopping up 1-2 fresh bird chilies per person), 1Tbsp palm sugar (substitute brown sugar if you can't find it)

Vegetable base:
2 red onions, diced, generously sized
1 bunch green onions, chopped (use both the green and the white parts)
1 cucumber, peeled and chopped
1 bunch mint (sprinkle on chopped leaves as you like)
1 bunch cilantro (sprinkle on chopped leaves as you like; I can't stand cilantro so I omit)
1 bag pre-mixed greens
1 ½ cup cherry tomatoes

Directions

Let the meat marinate while you prepare the dressing in another bowl.

Grill the meat—and by “grill” I mean, fire up the back burner, let a pan dowsed in olive oil get good and hot, and give the steak a good few minutes on each side, just enough to char the outside and leave the middle nice and juicy. Of course, if bloody isn't your thing, by all means, keep it on a bit longer. Once the top and bottom are both seared, however, you might want to turn down the heat a bit and add a lid to avoid burning the outside while the middle gets done.

Slice the meat into long strips and let it marinate in the dressing.

Start a batch of rice.

While the meat soaks in the flavor, chop the vegetables for the vegetable base and arrange them in a separate bowl.

Spoon meat and dressing over a pile of greens and a side of rice; enjoy with a cold beer.

Note: Yum Neuah makes great leftovers, but don't pour the juicy meat over the whole bowl greens or they'll get mushy; instead, serve individual portions from separate serving bowls. When you eat Yum Neuah right as its cooked, the meat will be hot but it is also delicious cold, straight from the fridge.

You can also make a vegetarian option by simply serving as a vegetable salad; there is a vegetarian version of “fish” sauce. But honestly, you're missing out.