Brekky: fresh rice noodle with vietnamese beef watercress salad

Fresh rice noodles with a Vietnamese watercress beef salad

For today I prepped myself a Vietnamese style dish. I bought a beautiful bunch of watercress at the farmer's market in Wollongong (tip: never by a bunch that has flowers because it will be bitter).
Some peoples would expect watercress to be a typical Western veggie but it is actually native to Asia and used widely in Asian cuisine.

Watercress, how to use it

Watercress bought on Wollongong Farmer's market

In China, for example, watercress is used in soups, and in Vietnam, you can find beautifully cooked salads with watercress. A lot of times watercress sprouts are used. Good ingredients to combine with watercress are eggs, pork, beef, tomato, basil, and garlic (don't combine them altogether of course).

Brekky this morning

For brekky this morning I prepared fresh rice noodles, served with a Vietnamese style cold watercress salad. The main ingredient of the salad is watercress. For this dish, you can use full-grown watercress, as long as it has no flowers or watercress sprouts. Other ingredients used in this salad are thinly sliced stir-fried slices of beef, small tomatoes,  sliced white onion. Very thinly sliced red or yellow capsicum is excellent to add complexity to your salad.

Preps

First I marinated the thinly diced white onion I used is marinated in lemon juice, sugar and a bit of salt. Secondly, I  marinated the thinly sliced beef in oyster sauce, cooking wine, salt, sugar, and garlic.


While waiting for time to pass by I prepared the salad dressing from vinegar, fish sauce, oil and a bit of sugar. Then I mixed in all the veggies. I gave my beef a brief stir-fry and removed the meat from the wok to let it cool. Once it was cooled I topped my salad with the beef and enjoyed with a bunch of freshly cooked rice noodles!

Serve!

Rice noodles can be substituted with thin rice noodles, rice or rice cake. Add fish sauce, chili, salt and lemon juice to taste.