bo luc lac (vietnamese shaken beef)

This awesome recipe of one of my all-time favorite dishes is from my friend Chrystine who is an amazing chef! You'll love it!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ingredients:

- around 3 lbs of flank steak (serves 3) (*note* flank steak is very easy to use for shaking beef since it won't get chewy even when you overcook it)
- watercress (washed and rinsed)
- yellow onion (sliced)
- tomatoes (sliced)
- lime, salt, black pepper, cooking oil and some water (for salad dressing)
- a couple of slices of butter (salted real butter, not margarine) (optional)

Marinade:

- 3 tablespoons of soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons of sugar
- 3 tablespoons of cooking oil
- 4-5 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)
- plenty of black pepper

Preparation:

Wash and pat dry the flank steak then cut against the grain and then cubed into bitesize (can be varied on the size of the bite ;-D) . Mix the cut-up steak cubes in a bowl with the marinading ingredients then let it sit for a couple of hours for best result but if you don't have time to prepare in advance then it should be good marinaded for 45 minutes.

Cooking Instructions:

Use a regular pan (not the non-sticking kind) since you want the beef to *burn (brown) a little for the color and the aroma. Rinse the pan under running faucet then put the pan on high heat and wait til the water evaporates (this is just to indicate that the pan is hot enough to brown the beef). Put one batch (about a single serving size) of beef into the pan and stir with a wooden spatula and let it brown on both sides. When it's nice and brown and you can smell the aroma, throw in a slice of butter or two and pour onto your bed of watercress (prepared in advance, with slices of tomatoes and onions).

Dressing:

You can either make the dressing for the watercress salad (a combination of lime juice, water, salt, black pepper and cooking oil, shaken up well) or just leave it plain and use a soy sauce as dipping sauce or salt, pepper and lime juice as a dipping sauce.

PS - I personally love it with the watercress salad! ~ Sarah