Thai Style mince pork & pineapple noodle salad

ingredients

1 tbs oil
500 g minced pork (i used kangeroo mince)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 stalk lemon grass, finely chopped
2-3 shallots, thinly sliced
3 tsp finely grated ginger
1 small chili, finely chopped
5 kaffir lime leaves, finely shreded
200g mung bean noodles (tang hoon)
60 g baby spinach noodles (used grated carrot and beansprouts instead)
1 cup coriander greens, chopped
1/2 cup mint leaves

dressing
1.5 tbsp shaved palm sugar / soft brown sugar
2 tbs fish sauce
80ml lime juice
2 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp peanut oil


Method:

heat a wok until very hot, add the oil and swirl to coat the work. Add the garlic, lemon grass, shallots, ginger, chili and lime leaves and stir fry for 2-3 mins/ until fragrant. Add the minced meat and stir fry until lightly golden.
Set aside.

Place the noodles in a large bowl and voer with boiling water for 30 seconds or until softened. Rinse untl cold water and drain well. Toss in a bowl with the spinach, corainder, pinaapple, mint and meat mixture.

To make the dressing, mix together the palm sugar, fish sauce and lime juice. Add the sesame oil and extra peanut oil, and whisk to combine. Toss through the salad and season with freshly ground pepper.

Serves 4

Recipe taken from Family Circle's Salad Days.

Comments:

this salad does taste better the next day, when all the flavours have properly mingled. Cos this is a 'western' recipe, i find that the amount of meat to be more than sufficient...usually for asian cuisines, u'd be quite safe portioning 40- 60g of meat per person but for western recipes, i find the range is 100-150g of meat per person. What I did was to double both the noodles and dressing...tot that the sesame oil didn't work too well together, so perhaps i wouldn't add it the next time...but all in all...a yummy dish..love the combination of pineapple and lemongrass!!