Beef Stew Vietnamese Style with Kway Teow (flat rice noodle)

I love vietnamese food as I find them very light and appetising. I was lucky to grab hold of a vietnamese cookbook at the library - The Vietnamese Cookbook by Diana My Tran and like the recipes. The look very simple for a FTWM like me. So I gave this one a try as it sounds delish looking at the ingredients used. I am very happy to have tried it as my family loves it. The taste is light but very satisfying. You can serve this with kway teow/noodles or bread.

Of course mine looks very very far from the authentic dish *LOL*

Here is the recipe. I added potatoes because my husband likes potatoes. You can add about 1 or 2 medium potatoes, cube

For the dipping sauce, I used store bought chicken rice chilli but you can use whatever chilli sauce that you like.

Ingredients
1 - 1.5 lb beef, cut into cubes
1 lemongrass, cut the green part off and bruised the white portion
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
3 carrots, cut into cubes
5C water
2-3T oil
salt to taste

Marinade
1/2t five spice powder
1/4t curry powder
1/4t chilli flakes/pepper flakes (more if you like it spicy but I omit this because my kids can't take spicy stuffs)
2T oyster sauce
2T tomato paste

Garnish
thai basil
lime wedges
hoisin sauce and chilli sauce for dipping

Method
1. Mix all the marinade ingredients and marinate the beef with it for 15mins
2. Heat pot with oil and sautee chopped onion and garlic till fragrant (don't burn the garlic)
3. Add the marinated beef and stir till it browned a little bit
4. Add water and lemongrass and let it simmer, skim off the froth and foam
5. Let it simmer for 30mins than add the carrots, salt to taste and continue simmering till the meat is tender usually about 1hr or more
6. Serve it hot with kway teow and the garnishes or just french loaves

I used my thermo pot and cooked over the stove for about 30mins then transfer the inner pot to the outer pot and let it cook for the next 6hours. The meat came out very tender.