Wok Wednesdays: Spicy Dry-Fried Beef

The stars aligned tonight. My Shin santuko knife arrived in the mail yesterday. Plenty of fresh vegetables in the fridge. It's Friday night. No kids tonight which means things can get spicy.  In the kitchen, that is!  

I just signed up for Wok Wednesdays a week or so ago, and so I have plenty of recipes to catch up. After cooking this week's recipe on Tuesday, I decide to pick something that I was in the mood for tonight. My favorite stir fry photograph in Grace Young's Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge  is on page 64. When it comes to Chinese food, I gravitate towards stir fries that are dry. Less sauce. Lots of colors and texture. This recipe was perfect for tonight's dinner. Grace describes this dish that is "a little salty, fiery, and peppery with a touch of sweetness"...which sounds an awful lot like me. 

The main ingredients include a lean flank steak, carrots, celery, scallions, dried red chilies, ginger, garlic and sesame oil.  Love me some sesame oil. 

Trying to figure out how to measure two cups of carrots and one cup of celery was too painful for me think about especially on a Friday night. So I pretty much eyeballed the amounts of vegetables. Doubled up on garlic and ginger.  One can never have enough garlic and ginger. I substituted dried red chilies for fresh Thai chilies that were leftovers from the last recipe. I used three red chilies which gave the perfect kick in the arse.

 Like a kid with a new toy on Christmas day, I was pretty psyched about using my new knife. A Shun santuko. How did I deprive myself all these years without owning a Shun.  A sharp knife, for that matter. Like kneading bread dough, prep work in the kitchen for me has always been a relaxing activity. Tonight, slicing, mincing and chopping the vegetables was sheer pleasure. Like chocolate and a cabernet.

The recipe called for sautéing the julienne vegetables first...

Then searing the strips of flank steak ...

 The recipe calls for stir-frying the meat for 3 minutes till well browned, and all the liquid has disappeared, and the wok is almost dry. So I followed the recipe to the T, and even used a timer to count my minutes of searing and stirring.

The vegetables and meat are tossed together in the wok..

 In the last minute, the ginger and garlic are combined. And at the last second, sesame oil is added with salt and pepper.

This recipe was quite fun to make! This is my first time experiencing a dry-frying technique of the meat, which is typical Sichuan, according to Grace. I favor dishes where the vegetables are somewhat al dente. They are crisp to the bite and flavors remain. This dish makes an attractive photograph due to the vivid colors and contrasting textures of the crisp vegetables and tender meat.  I loved the peppery and fiery taste from the red chilies and the touch of sweetness from the carrots especially.  I loved it!

I loved this recipe.  Perfect blend of flavors: fiery and sweetness. What would I do different? The recipe calls for lean flank steak, cutting in 2 inch strips and against the grain. Perfect size. I thought the meat could have been more tender. This could mean  cutting some time off the 3 or so minutes, tossing the meat more often (less heat) , or possibly turning down the heat a bit. I think I was so caught up in reading, following directions to a T, managing the timer and trying to get some shots for the blog...that I should use my intuition.  Or what comes natural to me.

I served this with a bowl of jasmine rice and glass of wine. Cheers!

Wok Wednesdays: Chinese American Shrimp With Lobster Sauce

"Wow, this is really good" is what my 10 year old said as he polished his plate of the Shrimp with Lobster Sauce and jasmine rice.  This is saying a lot for a child who says to us he doesn't want to go to any more restaurants that ends in "-ese", like Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese.  I was pleasantly surprised that he didn't question the black beans or, for that matter, the green stuff (scallions). 

I really enjoyed making this recipe since it called for shrimp. My husband is slightly allergic to shrimp, so I usually order shrimp dishes in restaurants and seldom cook it at home. I just can't get enough of shrimp.  I have always wanted to learn how to cook with fermented beans so this was a great start to Wok Wednesdays.


From start to finish, the majority of the time spent in preparing this dish is in the prep work ( mincing and chopping) which include gathering and organizing the ingredients. Mise en place is essential when cooking in a wok, when the entire cooking process is rapid fire from the get go.  

Main ingredients:  shrimp, pork, garlic, ginger, fermented black beans, clam juice, thai chillies and scallions.  And one farm fresh egg from our chicken coop.

Unlike baking, my cooking set up is usually not this structured. I will look up 1-2 recipes of a particular meal, and come up with my own concoction. I suppose you can call it my creative outlet.   Needless to say, the organization above fed my OCD-ness. I usually don't have the patience to follow a cooking recipe verbatim. But today was different.  Kind of. Made some improvisations. I ended up buying a pound and a half of shrimp, rather than a pound.  I seem to think cooking a bigger serving is better.  I doubled the amount of garlic and ginger since I love both flavors. I used very little peppers so that it would be kid friendly. I substituted flour for cornstarch. According to Google, the ratio is 3 parts flour to 1 part cornstarch, but I  hesitated putting that much flour since I wanted to make sure I had plenty of "lobster sauce".

Oh, and I couldn't find clam juice at the grocery store. I've been walking around in crutches the past four weeks due to foot surgery, and I was just too damn tired to make another round down the aisles.  Passing the Italian section where I normally hang out, I grabbed a can of clam sauce thinking it would be a good substitute.  I didn't realize until five minutes before show time that the can was full of clams, parsley with a mucous-like consistency of broth.  Ew. Plan B was chicken broth, left over from holiday cooking.  It worked just fine.

Pan searing shrimp:

Sauteeing pork with ginger and garlic...

Combining shrimp and pork, a beaten egg, and scallions...

I would absolutely make this recipe again. My son loved it. My husband had a serving, despite his allergic reaction to shrimp. He said it was worth taking an anti-histamine. Next time, I would add more chilli peppers and fermented black beans.  I loved the freshness of the sauce from the boiled shrimp shells and freshly sliced ginger.

I really enjoy the fast paced cooking of the stir fry. Like the Neapolitan pizza that cooks at high temperatures in 60-90 seconds, much of the freshness, texture, and  flavor remain in stir fries.

Wok Wednesdays

I love all foods. Asian food is one of them. Chinese, Thai, Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese. Especially when it's AUTHENTIC.  While I've never been to any of these countries, I have had some of the best, authentic dishes in large, cosmopolitan cities like  Manhattan, Seattle, and San Francisco. Chinese food is one of those dishes that have been westernized so badly, especially in the South that it doesn't look or taste  like it's even foreign. Consider that I have to drive almost an hour away to shop at an Asian grocery store.

This brings me to the food adventures of Wok Wednesday, an online group that cooks a recipe every Wednesday from Grace Young's cookbook, Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge, a James Beard award winning book!  I'm really excited about this new adventure to becoming a bona fide wokker.  I have dabbled cooking Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and Indian food a couple of dishes from each ethnicity, but for the most part, when we eat out, it's hitting an ethnic restaurant because it's easier to order out than cooking it at home. Having a small kitchen and pantry space, I can't image finding room for more ingredients that I would use 1-3 times a month.   Eating Chinese out is easier, but not necessarily better.  So I am ready to expand my repertoire of cooking more vegetables.  Exposing the kids to more flavors. Combining meat with vegetables in one cooking vessel. Using more of my favorite aromatic: ginger. And making room for more kitchen toys and ingredients.

So I'm embracing this challenge of cooking authentic Chinese with the guidance of Matt Lardie of Green Eats Blog, and Grace Young, the author of Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge. Seeing what the other wokkers have created so far is very encouraging.  And inspiring.

Book in hand. Wok is on its way.  I will soon be a proud owner of a Shun santoku knife, an early birthday gift from my husband. Yes, it was time to replace my 25 year old Wusthof chef knife. And, so looking forward to a trip to the Asian grocery store!  I desperately need to update the pantry  and toss out the old, dusty bottles of soy sauce and rancid sesame oil.

So here's the deal. We cook twice a month, and blog about our cooking experience to share with others.  We won't be posting the actual recipe, so I highly recommend you buy this book, Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge, especially if you have an interest in authentic Chinese cooking and improving the quality of your life! Join us!!

Pomegranates & Lychees

Pomegranates remind me of our trip to Istanbul and Cesme in 2012.  I've never seen ruby pomegranates this robust and juicy. Vending carts full of pomegranates are found around street corners and market places. The tartness of pomegranate juice blended with fresh orange juice is the quintessential drink.

Lychees remind me of our summer months living in Maui.  Our favorite place on earth.  My mom used to buy canned lychees and served it with ice cubes in a bowl. I didn't care much for it then. Definitely an acquired taste.  Twenty some years later, it's become a favorite tropical fruit.  Especially, lychee martinis.