Stir-Fried Minced Beef with Lemongrass

From the book Rick Stein’s Far Eastern Odyssey

The recipe below is for 4 but can easily be scaled. The quantity of ingredients can also be altered to taste, levels of chilli and lemongrass for example. Do use the mint though, beef and mint seems wrong but works here.

Ingredients
500g Lean minced beef
1 tsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp roasted rice
5 fat lemongrass stalks, core thinly sliced (or to taste as lemongrass is highly perfumed)
75g shallots, thinly sliced
1 ½ tsp crushed dried chillies (or to taste)
2 red bird eye chillies very thinly sliced (or to taste)
4 tbsp lime juice
3 tbsp fish sauce
30g mixed fresh mint and coriander, roughly chopped
Crisp lettuce such as an iceberg, romaine or baby gem, split into separate leaves.

Method
To prepare the roasted rice, take the amount of rice needed and cook in a dry heavy based frying pan over a medium heat. Keep it moving until it is nicely golden brown. Whilst still hot either grind in a pestle and mortar or (easier) give it a couple of seconds in a spice grinder. You don’t want to blitz it into a powder, just to make it into smaller pieces.

Chop and prepare all the vegetables / herbs.

Heat the oil in a large wok / frying pan and stir-fry for about 4 minutes until it has just lost its red colour.

Mix the beef and all the other ingredients (apart from the lettuce) in a bowl and then serve right away. Spoon the beef mixture into the lettuce leaves - or better still get people to do that bit themselves.