Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Did You Guess The Antichrist? You Guessed Right!

It’s been unseasonably warm here lately, as it is only the end of May and our warm season normally runs from August 3rd through August 8th. Nonetheless, it has been warm and sunny and lovely recently, and today in particular was a long lazy Sunday. Now I am trying to elegantly segue from the nice weather to the fact that I decided to make a big salad for dinner, but I can’t think of a way to do it without saying something inane like, “nothing says summer like salad!” and thereby sounding like a complete simpleton, so instead I’ll just say that it was a hot day and I made a salad for dinner.

On the menu: Vietnamese Beef Salad. “Vietnamese” because I dress it with Ginger-Lime Dipping Sauce, which is one of the recipes in Mai Pham’s cookbook, Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table. “Beef” because it has sliced strip steak in it. And “Salad” because it is salad. Keep up, people.

I didn’t have everything I needed, however, so I went to one of the Asian markets to get a few things. Now, one of the things that you have to know about me is that I am a little superstitious. I hold to some of the superstitions most of you are familiar with, and also to a few Japanese superstitions that you probably haven’t heard of. Thus, if I can help it, I don’t walk under ladders or step on cracks. I’m not afraid of black cats because I like cats and believe them to be misunderstood creatures, but I won’t buy a particular type of fried tofu after dark because if I do, I may be robbed by foxes. I will throw salt over my shoulder if I spill any, but I won’t make my chopsticks stand upright in the rice. And I never ever buy four of any one item at a time. Well, unless there’s a good sale. I’m not a fanatic.

Yes, I’m getting to the part where that’s relevant. I went to the store to buy four items: cucumbers, fish sauce, rice noodles, and lime. (It’s okay to buy four things if they’re different things.) (It does so make sense.) The cucumbers were $1.43. The fish sauce was $3.99. The rice noodles were $0.99. The lime was $0.25. The total? See for yourself:

Did I consider saying, “uh … don’t total that out yet; I’m just going to go get one more lime”? Yes I did. But the smaller, more rational part of my brain realized that was mere foolishness, so I simply handed the cashier ten dollars and sixty-six cents. At which point she screamed, “$10.66? I spit on you, you Norman bastard!” (That’s a joke.) (I don’t care if you didn’t think it was funny. I thought it was funny. It’s not always about you.)

Then I came home, made my salad and ate it.

This turned out to be a less interesting story than I had anticipated. Therefore, I’ll throw in a recipe.

Vietnamese Beef Salad
The Salad of Eternal Damnation

Lettuce
Cucumber
Tomato
Beef Strip Steak
Rice Noodles
Ginger-Lime Dipping Sauce

Wash and tear lettuce. Peel and slice cucumber. Wash and slice tomato. Cook beef and slice across the grain. Boil rice noodles until tender, rinse in cold water. Arrange lettuce, cucumber, tomato, beef, and noodles on plate. Drizzle with Dipping Sauce. Don’t say Grace; you’re already doomed. Eat.

Hey, cooking is easy!

For more information, continue reading.

Ginger-Lime Dipping Sauce
The Dipping Sauce of Copyright Violation

1 teaspoon chopped garlic
2 or 3 Thai bird chilies, chopped
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons minced ginger
1/4 cup fish sauce
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
3 tablespoons water

Place the garlic, chilies, sugar, and ginger in a mortar and pound into a paste. Transfer to a small bowl and add the fish sauce, lime juice, and water. Stir well to combine. Set aside for 15 minutes before serving to let flavors meld.

A couple of things. (1) I have a mortar and pestle, but it’s a pain to clean because the mortar has grooves in it and the thing is not dishwasher-safe. Generally, when a recipe requires that a mortar and pestle be used, which … yeah, not that often, I ignore that part of the recipe and instead finely chop up the ingredients. This is probably why I am going to hell.

(2) I don’t use fresh chilies in this recipe because Thai bird chilies are very small and this is the only thing I make that calls for them. Also, I always halve the recipe, so I only need one. If I try to buy only one or two chilies, they don’t even register on the scale. If the cashier is sensible, she’ll tell me to give her a nickel or a dime, but if she’s not sensible, I have to wait for the manager to make the ultra-important decision. Therefore, I forgo the chilies and instead use a few drops of chili oil (not to be confused with sriracha, which is a chili paste). For no real reason, here is a picture of my bottle of chili oil:

Here’s another picture. Still no reason:

The fish sauce has a picture of crabs on the label, and the rice noodles have a picture of fish on the package. Sometimes dogs live with cats. Armageddon!

If you’ve never had rice noodles before, you want to get the kind that are long and bent and impossible to get out of the package, not the ones that are straight and short. Long noodles equal long life. That’s another superstition, but since I am already walking on thin ice, afterlife-wise, I feel it prudent to maximize my time on earth.

If you’ve never had fish sauce before, it’s supposed to smell that way.

If you’ve followed these extremely complex directions, your salad will look something like this:

I slightly overcooked the beef, so I hid it in the back of the photo, away from the cruel taunts of the blogosphere.

Preparation time: 30 minutes, unless you keep stopping to take photos, in which case, three hours.