This is not super authentic by any means, it's just my take on Yum Neua based on what I had on hand. This dish plays with most of the asian tastes, sweet, sour, salty, bitter, hot, astringent and umami. If this looks interesting, I encourage you to do a search for it and see how it's properly done. Here's how I made this batch:
1 grilled rare steak, rested and sliced thin as you can. 4 to 6 ounces of meat per serving is plenty.
The citrus "cooks" the meat a little, so don't be afraid to go very rare with a good fresh cut.
The dressing is simple, Juice of 1 lime, half tablespoon brown sugar, 2 garlic cloves diced to paste, and about half that amount of ginger. Small handful of plucked and loosely chopped cilantro leaves, and half a small onion. Shallots or purple onion is better, but we're winging it. The scary part: 3 tablespoons fish sauce. Don't be afraid, read below.
Finally, a fairly robust amount of cayenne pepper (unless you happen to have some of the tiny bird peppers on hand), and two small ripe tomatos. Toss and taste, salt as needed, then let it macerate about 5 minutes, and it's ready to plate.
A note about fish sauce: If you are new to this, it can be found in most asian food stores. Ask someone there to recommend a good one, I much prefer a Thai variety, and avoid the very dark ones or murky looking ones. I used Three Crabs brand fish sauce that seems to be more popular with Americans as a bit less fishy and slightly sweeter than some others. You want a good quality fish sauce, and they will know exactly what you mean, and help you avoid the
There are endless variations of Yum Neua. It seems in the past years Thai restaurants that I visit no longer use a good rare steak like this, they shave it super thin and overcook it. Years ago when I first fell in love with this dish, nobody served it with lettuce, it was just tomato, onion, Thai basil and cucumber, with the steak presented like prize sashimi.
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