Spring Break Thursday

**updated***

Today, Mr. D. was off to spend some time with me over Spring Break. We had a very productive day unlike the rest of my week. We ran a few errands. We ate lunch at Zoe's, which I LOVE. We rented an industrial carpet cleaner- which we will be using tomorrow. We hung a shelf in the bathroom that had far to long has been neglected! We made Spicy Beef Salad.

This is Mr. D.'s absolute favorite thing to eat in the whole world. It's a dish from a restaurant called Surin that we like to go to. He found a recipe for it on the internet and we gave it a try. Here is the photo, the recipe and his review. I do not eat this, so I have no opinion to share.

Hands on time: 20 minutes Total time: 25 minutes Serves: 2

Ingredients:

Juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon prepared roasted red chili paste
1 pound flank steak
1 small cucumber, peeled, quartered lengthwise, seeded and julienned
1/4 red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 tomato, sliced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons chopped green onion

Instructions:

Prepare a medium fire in a grill. In a nonreactive bowl, combine the lime juice, fish sauce and chili paste; set aside. Slice the beef into thin strips, then grill to medium. Add to the bowl with the chili paste mixture and toss to coat.
Arrange the cucumber, onion, tomato, cilantro and green onion in a bowl. Top with the grilled steak and sauce.

I served his with rice because he always orders a side of rice. He also used lettuce wraps.

OK- I totally didn't do the cucumbers right, but I like them in circles and I knew who would be eating the rest of that cucumber. He didn't mention the shape of the cucumber in his critiques, so I am sure that didn't matter. He said this was almost dead on 100% the same as Surin's recipe, but he suggested the following.

* less lime. He said that he didn't even know there was lime in it based on eating it at the restaurant, but that in my dish you could really taste the lime.

* double everything else in the sauce. He said that there needed to be more sauce.

* use a better cut of beef. He said the flank steak was too touch and that a better cut of beef would have been better. Apparently at the restaurant he said the meat seemed to melt like butter. I wonder what they use!

Other than that- he said it was great!

****UPDATE**** We were able to find all of these ingredients at Target, and we noted the Publix had them as well. There is a red chili paste and a red chili and garlic paste. The recipe calls for the first, but the blurb before the recipe we got here mentions the second. We used the red chili paste and added fresh garlic.