Dressing:
The difficult part of the dressing is the chopping; you have to chop the lemon grass, chillies, garlic, shallots and ginger very fine.
I recommend first chopping them into very thin strips, then turning them to the side to chop into small squares, keep running your blade through until you create a sand consistency.
Once chopped, put the ingredients into a bowl and add the soy, mirin, fish sauce and sesame oil.
Finely chop the coriander and add to the mix.
To balance the dish, add lime juice and, if it needs palm sugar, grate it before melting it down with a little mirin.
Once the grains have dissolved, add to the dressing.
Making this the day before you need it, the flavours will become more intense.
Thai salad:
Soak your noodles in cold water until they are soft, and dry off once you need to use them.
Finely julienne your carrots, peppers, mange tout, mint leaves and spring onions.
Dice the avocado and mix the ingredients together.
Refresh your noodles by blanching them and add to the vegetables, stirring in the dressing.
Garlic crunch:
Finely chop the garlic and lemon grass and caramelise in vegetable oil. Once caramelised, drain on paper, soak and blanch the noodles, then deep fry until crispy.
Dry on paper, blitz the nuts and noodles in a blender and mix all your ingredients together, finishing off with the zest of the kaffir lime.
Beef:
I would use a lovely piece of rib eye for this dish.
With a hot pan, cook the beef until nice and pink inside.
Allow to rest for 5 minutes before slicing thinly and placing on top of the Thai salad.
Finish with a sprinkling of your garlic crunch.