Coconut & Beef Curry with Noodles

Monday night was time to cook with something completely new that I had not tried ever in any form.  I had two new ingredients in this recipe, coconut milk and Vermicelli.  The recipe came from my new cookbook Fresh Flavor Fast from Everyday Food.

It was really easy and quick to make once I sliced everything up.  I have to be annoyed here for a moment: all recipes these days have the amount of time it takes to cook, but they don't account for the time it takes to cut, dice, mice, slice, etc before you get to "thinly sliced lengthwise."  All that cutting takes much longer than 25 minutes.  Returning to your normal blog post: It was totally worth the time.  It was really good, the only change I would have made was adding some of my brothers dried chili mixture.  I also screwed up, as usual, I thought I had curry paste, but I had roasted red chili paste instead, so I guess it wasn't really curry.  I will have to try it with actual curry sometime. 

Since I didn't feel like cutting the recipe in half or quarter, I made the full 4 servings and saved it for lunches this week.  I am picky about my leftovers, I hate it when things start to fall apart, will not eat leftover burgers or hot dogs, the list continues. I was worried that the peppers might be kinda gross soggy, but they were fine and the flavor was still great. 

Coconut & Beef Curry with Noodles

• Coarse salt and ground pepper
• 8 oz. vermicelli (rice noodles) 
• 2 Tbsp. corn oil
• 1 lb. beef sirloin, cut into thin 2-inch strips
• 1 red onion, halved and thinly sliced
• 2 red bell peppers, thinly sliced lengthwise
• 1 Tbsp. Thai red curry paste ( I used roasted red chili paste)
• 1 can (14 oz.) coconut milk
• 1 Tbsp. fresh lime juice

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add a generous amount of salt. Cook noodles until tender according to package instructions. 
2. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, heat 1 Tbsp. oil over medium-high. Season beef with salt and pepper; add half the beef to the skillet. Cook, without stirring, until browned on one side, 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to a plate, and repeat with remaining beef. Set beef aside, you will cook it more later.
3. Add onion, bell peppers, and ¼ c. water to skillet; season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are crisp-tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Add curry paste stirring and  scraping bottom of skillet, until fragrant and combined, about 1 minute.
4. Return beef to skillet, with any accumulated juices, and add coconut milk. Simmer until sauce thickens slightly, 4 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in lime juice (f you have fresh basil some of it in too), and season curry with salt and pepper.
5. Serve beef curry over pasta.

I really need to get better at making food look more appealing like they do in the books...

 Enjoy!