Spicy Thai Noodles

Another quick mid-week recipe, the original actually uses quorn mince, but I swapped it for lean beef mince. It looks a bit colour less in the photo unfortunately, but believe me, it was stunningly tasty.

Ingredients 1 stick of lemon grass
2 - 4 red chillies (depending on desired spiciness)
2.5 cm piece fresh ginger
2 - 3 carrots
1 head of broccoli
2 dl soy beans
1 lime
2 tsp Thai fish sauce
1 tbsp light brown sugar
10 g fresh mint
3 tbsp toasted sesame seed oil
500 g beef mince
300 g fresh thin rice noodles

Method

1. Wash the lemon grass and chillies, then slice thinly. Peel and grate the ginger finely.
2. Peel and grate the carrot coarsely. Wash and cut up the broccoli into florets.
3. Wash the lime and grate the zest. Then cut in half and squeeze out as much of the juice as possible.
4. In a bowl, mix together the lime zest, juice, Thai fish sauce and sugar.
5. Wash and chop the mint.
6. Heat up the oil in a wok pan on low heat, then add the lemon grass, chillies and ginger and fry gently for 2 minutes.
7. Add the mince and stir vigorously to prevent it from clumping. Fry until it's browned a little.
8. Add the broccoli, carrots and noodles and stir until the vegetables soften.
9. Pour over the lime/fish sauce mixture over the stir-fry and add the chopped mint and stir through for 1 more minute, then it's ready to serve.

Looking at the recipe card, it's from April 2006, but the recipe seems to be still available on-line here at the time of writing. Curiously it has only received 3 stars out of 5, but there were no comments as to why people didn't like it. I gave it 4 stars, removing one because the original recipe didn't have any veggies.

Lundulph thought the use of mince in a stir fry was quite unusual and novel, but says he quite liked the resulting texture. I guess strips of beef or chicken will do just as nicely.