Vietnamese Beef Stir Fry with watercress

Inspired by Karen Martini’s recent recipe in the Sydney Morning Herald, I used ingredients I had at home to do a version of this simple but delicious stir fry.

Bit of chopping, marinating and grinding involved but worth it for the very tasty outcome.

Prep time: 1 hour Cooking time: 15 minutes
Ingredients:
500g rump steak, fat removed and cut into 1cm strips
1 bunch watercress
6 cloves garlic
4 red or green chillies sliced lengthwise into thin “batons”
1 small red or green capsicum sliced into 3cm long batons
1/4 bunch dill, thick stalks removed, chopped into 3cm lengths
1/2 bunch spring onions white and some green parts sliced into 3cm long batons
1 onion finely diced
2 tablespoons jasmine rice
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1.5 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon dark soy
1 tablespoon soy sauce
3 teaspoons palm sugar
1.5 teaspoons roughly ground black pepper
1/3 cup vegetable oil
Juice of 1 lime

Method

1. Slice beef, place in bowl.

2. Finely dice 4 cloves of garlic, crush 2 cloves into paste, add garlic to beef.

3. Add pepper and 1 tablespoon of fish sauce to beef and set aside to marinate for at least half an hour.

4. Heat a small pan and add rice to pan to toast. Keep shaking pan to brown rice but make sure it doesn’t burn. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

5. Prepare fresh ingredients. Trim and clean watercress, dice onions, cut capsicum, spring onions, dill, and chillies. Scatter watercress on a large serving platter and set aside.

6. grind rice to a rough powder in a mortar and pestle.

7. Mix palm sugar, 1 tablespoon fish sauce, oyster sauce, soy sauce, dark soy sauce and mix to combine and dissolve palm sugar in a amsl bowl and set aside.

8.Heat the oil in a wok on high for 4 minutes until smoking.

9. Carefully add beef to wok and spread so as much of beef surface on one side is in contact with wok. Reduce heat slightly but leave beef undisturbed for 2 minutes.