Thai High

Stir-fried beef with red curry paste and thai herbs

Serves 4

Ingredients

480g beef fillet, finely sliced

3 dessert spoons (dsp) of sunflower oil

3 cloves garlic, crushed, chopped

5 bird’s eye chillies, chopped

1 heaped dsp red curry paste

50g galangal, finely sliced

30g galingale root, finely sliced

4 kaffir lime leaves, torn

80g string beans, cut 4cm

50g bamboo shoots

50g purple aubergine, cut lengthways, sliced

3 bunches of fresh green peppercorns

3 chillies, sliced

80g Thai round aubergine, cut in 4

2dsp fish sauce

1/4tsp sugar

30ml chicken stock or water

10g sweet basil, torn

Cooking method
Bring the wok to a medium heat, add the oil, garlic, bird’s eye chilli and red curry paste and stir until you get an aroma. Add the beef and stir for another 30 seconds before adding the galangal, galingale root and kaffir lime leaves. Add in the string beans, bamboo shoots, Thai round and purple aubergine, fresh peppercorns and chillies. Season with the fish sauce and sugar and then add some chicken stock or water around the edge of the wok so it doesn’t cool and you gather in the nice ingredients around the edge. Stir for a minute.

To serve
Add the sweet basil and serve with Thai jasmine rice.

A few handy tips..
Be careful not to overcook the vegetables as they should be crunchy.
Use fresh or frozen kaffir lime leaves rather than the dried leaves, which have very little flavour.

SERVE WITH….
A refreshing Think Pink cocktail

Ingredients

? fresh pink grapefruit

40ml Saffron gin

10ml vanilla extract

Cardamom infused sugar

Pink grapefruit to garnish

Preparation
In a shaker, muddle the pink grapefruit and then add the gin and vanilla extract. Add ice and shake well. Fine strain into a cardamom sugar rimmed martini glass.

Rim the glass with sugar by running a wedge of grapefruit around the rim of the glass and then dipping the rim in the sugar.

Garnish with pink grapefruit.

Saba:The Cook Book by Paul Cadden, €30, is available now in Saba, Saba To Go,? from good bookshops or online. All proceeds go to The Bone Marrow Transplant Unit in Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin and to The Thai Red Cross Society.