What’s in a wok?

Chinese home kitchens typically aren’t heavy with gadgetry. You will normally find a sizeable round chopping block, an all purpose meat cleaver, a fruit/paring knife and, at the centre of it all, a wok. A wok which preferably comes with a lid.

Woks can be used for essentially every type of Chinese cooking method – stir-frying, pan-frying, deep-frying, boiling, stewing, braising, steaming, smoking (the latter two are when the lid comes in handy) – hence their importance in the kitchen. As a result, the desirable features of a wok include even heating and having steep and deep sides to prevent spillage when cooking, as well as for practical spacing issues on the stove.

In a space-tight city such as Hong Kong, it is common for home kitchens to have two-burner gas stoves which sit atop a section of purposely low kitchen benchtop. The wok lives permanently on one of the burners because why would you need to put it away when you’re using it every day? And although I have a four-burner cooktop in my current kitchen, I still need to be mindful of large woks which can effectively invade the space of other burners despite it being positioned on only one of them!

My maternal grandfather had a small wok which was coveted by all family members. It heated up quickly and was relatively light, and had become blackened through being well-seasoned over many years of use which rendered it non-stick. It was narrow in diameter and had a rounded bottom which fit perfectly into the stove burners. This was inherited by an aunt of mine but sadly it had to be retired a couple of years ago.

Modern woks, such as the Anolon one pictured above, conveniently come with a non-stick coating which does away with the seasoning process and means little or no oil needs to be used when cooking. Well, unless you’re deep-frying, of course! They also tend to have a wider flat area at the bottom compared with traditional woks, which means you can still fry “flat” things (like eggs, crêpes, pancakes, etc) without everything pooling in a pit. At 30cm in diameter the Anolon wok is at the upper extremity of my ideal size, only because I have small hands and wrists and have trouble balancing anything larger, although the rubber-coated handle which is ingeniously taller than it is wide aids with its grip.

And grip is important when cooking things such as the stir-fry below, so that you can slide it out onto a plate when done rather than having to lift it out in sections and lose heat from your cooked dish.

Stir-fried bitter melon with egg (涼瓜炒蛋) (serves 2-3 as part of a meal)

Bitter melon is something I didn’t learn to appreciate until a few years spent living in Hong Kong. It was rarely available in Sydney during my childhood, although thankfully this is not the case now. Cantonese cuisine features melons/gourds from summer through to autumn, whilst the colder months are spent eating green leafy vegetables. Blanching the melon slices prior to cooking helps to temper the bitterness, and cooking it with egg adds a creamy sweetness.

Ingredients:

·         1 medium-sized bitter melon

·         2-3 eggs, lightly beaten

·         small chopped chilli, XO sauce (optional)

Method:

1.      Halve the bitter melon lengthwise and remove the seeds and soft inner pith by scraping with a teaspoon. Cut the melon into thin (3-4mm) slices.

2.      Heat a wok over medium-high heat and add the bitter melon. Pour enough freshly boiled water over to cover the melon slices. Add 1 tsp salt and stir until dissolved. Once the bitter melon slices take on a bright green colour, strain and set aside. Discard the cooking water.

3.      Return the wok to the heat and wipe dry the inside with a paper towel. Return bitter melon to the wok and stir-fry briefly with ½ tsp salt. (Chopped chilli and XO sauce, if using, can be added to the melon at this point in time.) Pour over the egg and let cook until starting to set before turning over, in sections – it does not have to be neat or kept in one piece like an omelette. Continue to flip and turn until the egg is cooked then slide onto a plate to serve.

Mademoiselle Délicieuse received an Anolon Advanced 30cm Open Stir-Fry pan for review courtesy of Kitchenware Direct as part of this post.

happy cooking!

Khacha Thai, 24 April 2010

Sometimes when dining out, you really have to get in early. But who knew, with the number of eateries dotting the Crows Nest area, that it could be so hard to secure a table for four people on a Saturday evening?

I had suggested a few places to Idol and Mistress before they dropped by and dutifully rang ahead for reservations only to be told that each place was booked out until at least 8:30pm. And with the days getting shorter and the seasons cooler, it really is quite hard to hold out until a late dinner unless there is some forethought towards pre-snacking (or unexpected late lunches and over-eating, hmmm).

We wander into several places along Pacific Highway, skipping a few that don’t appeal to our appetites that evening and those which are worryingly empty. We finally settle on Khacha Thai due to its colourful interior and encouragingly almost full capacity.

The lighting is dim and the furniture is dark, but there are elephants and fresh floral touches everywhere as well as a waterfall wall feature. We notice this carries over to the food presentation when our starters arrive, with orchid and carnation decorations. The stuffed chicken wings are my choice – the last time I had something similar was in the Chinese restaurant where I worked part-time through university. Mum tells me stuffed wings used to be a popular banquet item on Chinese menus but fell out of favour due to their fiddliness to make. The bones from the wingette and mid-wing are removed before the resultant cavities are stuffed, usually, with a minced pork mixture as they are here. Khacha Thai has mung bean vermicelli (cellophane/glass noodles) and wood ear fungus incorporated into their stuffing mixture and the wings are deep-fried before being served sliced and drizzled with sweet chilli sauce.

Our other starter is the standard fare of fish cakes which have a herby flavour and smooth yet bouncy texture. The dipping sauce is sprinkled with plenty of peanuts and is sweet, but what I silently long for is something with a bit more of a heat kick. We all agree the same can be said for the ‘Green papaya salad with prawns’ and possibly more papaya to balance out the shredded carrot. Prawns are a-plenty but what we’re wanting is that flavour equilibrium for which Thai cuisine is so well-known.

Red duck curry is one of those things that seems to always be ordered when we visit Thai restaurants. There must be a universal appeal about roast duck which has been stewed in the creamy, fragrant sauce in amongst the jumble of lychees, pineapple and vegetables. Of course curry is the perfect foil for a rice accompaniment and this is Monsieur Poisson’s downfall – it is just too easy to over-indulge on rice when there is sauce facilitating it to almost effortlessly slide down the throat.

The chilli chicken stir-fry is crisp with the crunch of cashews but unfortunately the chicken is a little bland and dry, however it offers respite from the richness of the red duck curry.

The dessert menus offer more colour being presented in wooden frames with double covers which open like French windows.

Not surprisingly my banana-loving husband, Monsieur Poisson, orders the ‘Banana fritter with caramel sauce’. Two curved nuggets of golden battered banana are presented up one end of a rectangular plate with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream balanced on top. The caramel sauce is thin and not overly sugary.

Idol chooses the ‘Sticky rice with coconut custard’ which thankfully has only a thin coconut sauce but is quite filling due to the glutinous texture of the rice.

Mistress orders the ‘Coconut ice-cream with palm seeds, black sticky rice and peanuts’ which gives me a chance to try palm seeds. Roughly the size of almonds, the palm seeds have a firm jelly-like textured outer – think firmer than agar – and a solid, almost crunchy, centre. Taste-wise it doesn’t possess much flavour but there is a bed of black sticky rice underneath as well as a generous scoop and a half of coconut ice-cream on top.

So while the food doesn’t wow us entirely, the desserts are definitely something special here. Our quest to eat locally continues, as well as my search for some Thai which is not too far away from home.

Khacha Thai

308a Pacific Hwy, Crows Nest NSW

Tel: (02) 9966 8444, 9966 8333

Opening Hours:  7 days  12pm-3pm

5:30pm-10:30pm

happy eating!

Epicure Recipe Card #5: Wok-fried Green Beans with Chilli Pork

Jill Dupleix obviously likes her stir-fries because there are more than a few in this pack of recipe cards! But rest assured, for I think I may have finally exhausted their numbers. For this particular recipe card I stuck pretty true to the ingredients and instructions with the only major difference being that I sliced up a fillet of pork instead of using mince as advised. Didn’t have any pork mince to hand at the time but, of course, the beauty of stir-fries is their flexibility so feel free to use chicken, beef or lamb instead.

Wok-fried Green Beans with Chilli Pork

(adapted from The Age – Epicure 50 Best Recipe Cards, recipe by Jill Dupleix)

Ingredients:

·         200g pork fillet, thinly sliced

·         1 quantity of My All-purpose Cantonese Marinade

·         1 tbs cooking oil

·         1 tbs shredded ginger (optional)

·         1 small red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

·         2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

·         ¼ white onion, finely sliced (optional)

·         200g green beans, sliced into lengths

·         ½ capsicum, sliced

Method:

1. Toss pork with the marinade and set aside 20-30 minutes.
2. When ready to cook, heat the oil in a wok or saucepan to almost smoking on high heat. Add ginger, if using, for around 10 seconds before adding chilli and garlic. Stir-fry until fragrant before adding the pork. Keep moving meat around in pan until most pieces are cooked to medium-well before removing from pan and setting aside. 

3. Add onion to the hot pan and allow to soften slightly before adding beans to the pan. Stir-fry until beans are bright green then cover with a lid for about a minute before removing lid to toss around. Cover for another minute or two before adding capsicum. Replace lid and check at 1 minute intervals for how cooked the vegetables are.
4. When vegetables are almost done, return pork to the pan and adjust seasoning only if necessary. Make sure to keep stir-frying until meat is cooked through before serving.

happy cooking!

Here piggy, piggy, piggy!

Of the many weddings I attended in the past two years, only two have been Chinese banquets. There are typically many small courses much like a degustation menu and usually starts with roast suckling pig. There is something rather special about this fine, tender, young meat which doesn’t taste as strongly of pork as its older cousins and has a thinner layer of skin which yields a smoother, crispier crackling. It tends to be reserved for special occasions in Chinese tradition and is not always readily available in Cantonese barbeque stores.

At one of these weddings where Mr Awesome was also a guest, we were discussing our love of the baby pig when I mentioned it was common practice for guests to ask for the roasted head and trotters to take home to be used in a soup base or congee much like you would a ham hock. We were most disappointed when we brought this up with our waiter and were met with the response that all uneaten parts had already been thrown out. What an absolute waste! Mr Awesome then had a most brilliant idea – for his next birthday he would eschew the usual birthday cake and cut open a roast piggy instead. Mmmm…

A couple of months later and we were met with the most amazing sight of Mr Awesome being wheeled in his birthday pig on a trolley and taking to it with a heavy meat cleaver from head to tail. The crunch of beautiful crackling was heard by all as he was doing so and, afterwards, I was duly offered the head and trotters to create something beautiful.

You may find the above picture disturbing and/or confronting but it is a reality that all meat-eaters should face. Meat comes from animals and these animals are raised and slaughtered to give us the meat; just because it comes neatly butchered or pre-packaged should not sanitise this fact. Nevertheless, I found myself face-to-face in my kitchen with said piggy and didn’t quite know how to tackle it – it’s not everyday that I have a roasted pig’s head sitting around!

So if you find yourself with leftover roasted suckling pig parts on your hands this Chinese New Year, here are a couple of ideas. I decided the trotters would be used for congee and trimmed away any large fatty chunks. From the head, I removed the cheeks and then the lobes of fat from those before finely slicing the remaining skin and meat to be used in a noodle stir-fry. Although the cheeks were not terribly large once the fatty bits had been trimmed away, they did produce a handsome tub of sliced meat.

The congee did require some seasoning as the marinade for the roast pig is rubbed in the cavity of the pig and not on the limbs, which mainly just taste of roasted smokiness. The noodle stir-fry was done in two batches due to its size but apologies as we hungrily dug into it before any photos were taken. You’ll just have to imagine and visualise how it tasted and looked!

Roasted Pig’s Trotters Congee (serves 4-5)

Ingredients:

·         1 cup of long grain rice (unrinsed or rinsed only once), soaked in 2 cups of cold water in a large pot overnight

·         4 roasted pig’s trotters from a suckling pig, fat trimmed

·         1 tsp finely shredded ginger

·         salt, to taste

Method:

1. Add a cup of cold water to the pot of soaked rice and bring to the boil over medium heat. Add ginger and stir a few times to prevent sticking at the bottom.
2. Add pig’s trotters and increase heat to high to bring back to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook, half covered, for about 45 minutes. Stir the bottom occasionally and skim any large charred bits which float to the top.
3. Remove pig’s trotters to a chopping board to cool a little but keep the congee simmering on a low heat, stirring occasionally. When cool enough to handle, remove meat from trotters and roughly chop before setting aside. Return pig’s trotter bones to the pot and simmer for another 30 minutes or so until the mixture is fluffy and there are no discernable grains of rice. You may need to add water if you prefer a thinner consistency.
4. Remove bones and return chopped trotter meat to the pot. Stir through and season with salt to taste. Serve in bowls with ground white pepper and finely chopped spring onions alongside for sprinkling on top, if desired. 

Roasted Pork Cheek Noodle Stir-Fry (serves 4-5)

Ingredients:

·         500g pack of Hokkien noodles

·         2 roasted pig’s cheeks from a suckling pig, fat trimmed, cut into strips

·         finely shredded ginger (optional)

·         1 small red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped (optional)

·         2 tbs hoisin sauce

·         ⅓ medium Chinese cabbage (‘wom bok’/’wong nga bak’), shredded

·         4 tbs hoisin sauce

Method:

1. Bring a large pot or wok of water to the boil and briefly blanch the noodles to remove its excess coating of oil. Do this in batches if necessary. Drain and set aside.
2. Heat a wok over medium-high heat and briefly stir-fry the pork cheek strips until lightly browned and some of the fat is released. Toss ginger and chilli with this, if using. Add 2 tbs hoisin sauce and toss until evenly coated before setting aside.
3. Increase heat to high and add cabbage to the pan. Stir-fry until wilted and set aside.
4. Place half the noodles in the pan and toss briefly to evaporate any clinging moisture before adding half the pork cheek strips and half the shredded cabbage. Stir-fry until well mixed, adding a tablespoon of hoisin sauce if needed. Repeat with the remaining ingredients. 

happy chinese new year & happy cooking!

Winter Solstice Festival: Kam Fook (金福) Chatswood, 22 Dec 2009

The Chinese calendar is also known as the lunar calendar as it is calculated around phases of the moon (the 1^st of each month is always a new moon and the 15^th a full moon), as well as the agricultural calendar (農曆) as it contains information about seasonal changes which were important when the bulk of people farmed for a living.

From a very early age, I was taught to appreciate that there are a few major festivals on the Chinese calendar that require us as a family unit to sit down to dinner together. The most important, of course, is Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival (春節) as it heralds the spring season in the northern hemisphere and the related time of tending to crops which are starting to shoot. Chinese New Year is a very well publicised event around the world and even attracts a street parade to celebrate the occasion in our fair city of Sydney.

The next event of importance would be Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節), also called Moon Festival where the moon is meant to be at its roundest and ‘fullest’ and is a time to celebrate togetherness as well as the end of the harvest season. The food of significance is the moon cake, often with a centre of a salted duck egg yolk or two or three…or four!

And then there’s Winter Solstice Festival (冬至) which the Chinese see as the end of winter as from this day onwards, the daylight hours become longer again in the northern hemisphere and means for more productivity in a farming environment. I have fond memories of celebrating it with family in Hong Kong as a child, with all of us crowding around a hotpot (火鍋) for food and warmth. It is a bit incongruous to celebrate it whilst living in Sydney as it is summer solstice with us being in the southern hemisphere, but it is an occasion for a family dinner nonetheless especially when it normally falls just a few days before Christmas.

So we find ourselves at Kam Fook Chatswood as, although we’ve had yum cha here a countless number of times over the years, we’ve never actually tried if for dinner. It’s quite a busy evening as everyone seems to be out for dinner, so the usual Chinese restaurant plate of complimentary pickled vegetables and complimentary soup are most welcome to keep us occupied whilst we peruse the menu. For those not familiar with Chinese soups, it is a broth-like affair that is often chicken or pork based and contains ingredients to give it health beneficial qualities.

When dining out we usually choose dishes which are either too fiddly to prepare at home or those which are too difficult to replicate in terms of flavour or ‘breath of wok’ (鑊氣). So we start our meal with ‘Lobster cooked with ginger and spring onions on a bed of e-fu noodles’ (薑蔥龍蝦伊麵底) where the noodles act as an excellent vessel to soak up the sweet shellfish juices. The cornstarch coating on the pieces of lobster is a tiny bit too thick but otherwise the dish tastes lovely.

My choice for the evening is the vegetarian dish of ‘Bamboo fungus with seasonal vegetables’ (竹笙扒時蔬) which is a bit light on the bamboo fungus but features plenty of broccoli, cloud ear fungus and mixed wild mushrooms in a light oyster sauce.

Nella chooses the ‘Three cups chicken’ (三杯雞) which arrives simmering with a clay pot full of chicken pieces on the bone and is fragrant of a sticky, sweet soy and spring onions. Upon tasting, there is a mild kick of chilli which makes the sauce perfect for pairing with a bowl of plain rice.

We often have ‘Grouper served two ways’ (星斑兩食) as it is quite good value. One dish standardly is fillets of the fish stir-fried with a seasonal vegetable (炒斑片) and, in this instance, is asparagus segments. The asparagus have mostly been peeled but are a tiny bit overcooked and too soft for my liking as a result.

The other dish is normally a choice between having the fin bits steamed alongside firm tofu but this evening we’ve gone for the head and belly parts to be braised in a hotpot (燜斑頭煵) with lettuce, deep-fried tofu and Chinese roast pork.

And, as always, we have food left over to be taken away which is desired for dinners to celebrate calendar festivals as it means there is plentiful feed for the family. But there is no escaping before further gorging ourselves on a complimentary fruit platter and Chinese dessert soup. Thank goodness it’s red bean (azuki) soup (紅豆沙) as my husband loathes the mung bean variant!

Kam Fook (金福) Chatswood

Level 6 of Westfield Chatswood, Anderson St, Chatswood NSW

Tel: (02) 9413 9388

Opening Hours:  7 days  10am-3pm (yum cha lunch)

5:30-10:30pm (dinner)

happy chinese new year & happy eating!

Epicure Recipe Card #3: Wok-fried Chicken with Asparagus & Shiitake

I know, I know… I can already hear you saying, “Another stir-fry recipe?!” Well I can’t help that the recipe cards seem to feature heavily in this area but it also does suit the times when I’m not terribly motivated with planning. So please forgive me and I can assure you that there are many other things to come. But you can’t deny the ease of these for mid-week dinners, can you? Which is exactly the reason why I choose them.

For this week’s selected recipe card, I pared it down a little again and cut back on the variety of ingredients used. I served it alongside bowls of plain egg noodles in broth although, of course, you can serve it with rice.

Wok-fried Chicken with Asparagus & Shiitake (serves 2)

(adapted from The Age – Epicure 50 Best Recipe Cards, recipe by Jill Dupleix)

Ingredients:

·         1 skinless chicken breast, thinly sliced

·         1 quantity of My All-purpose Cantonese Marinade

·         6 dried shiitake, soaked in cold water overnight

·         ½ tsp sugar

·         1 bunch asparagus, woody stems removed and cut into lengths

·         1 tbs cooking oil

·         finely shredded ginger (optional)

·         1 tbs oyster sauce

Method:

1. Toss chicken with the marinade and set aside 20-30 minutes.
2. In the meantime, remove stalks from shiitake and slice the caps to about 5mm thick. Toss sliced caps with the sugar and set aside. (This helps to remove a ‘fishy/bitter’ flavour that the Chinese describe.)
3. When ready to cook, heat the oil in a wok or saucepan to almost smoking on high heat. Add ginger, if using, for around 10 seconds before adding the chicken. Stir-fry until most pieces are cooked to medium-well before removing chicken from pan and setting aside.
4. Add shiitake slices to the hot pan and toss until starting to brown before adding the asparagus. Stir-fry asparagus until bright green and cover with a lid for a minute before checking how cooked they are. If they’re too crunchy for your liking then cover for another minute before checking again.
5. Return chicken to pan along with oyster sauce and stir-fry the whole lot until cooked through.

happy cooking!

Eastwood Garden Peking (伊士活), 10 Nov 2009

As a child, the city was known to me as Peking until it became Beijing (北京) after China made a move to standardise all its geographical names in Mandarin. I am told by elder Chinese that Beijing was popularly known as Peking to the rest of the world due to foreigners being introduced to it pronounced under different Chinese dialects. To this day the widely loved Beijing-style roast duck (北京烤鴨), commonly served with pancakes/crêpes, hoisin sauce (海鮮醬), cucumber sticks and spring onion segments, is still known as Peking duck. Regardless of its name, it is a beautiful dish of duck with thin and crispy skin and is not to be confused with Cantonese roast duck found on display in barbeque shops.

When Monsieur Poisson’s friend, Mr Tokyo, was in back in town for a visit, a dinner was quickly arranged with a couple of other friends and venturing somewhere for Peking duck immediately sprang to mind. Monsieur Poisson tells me that Mr Tokyo is known to have eaten a whole Peking duck by himself during their high school days, so that was reason enough to visit somewhere for this dish!

And although not run by Beijingnese people, nor exclusively featuring only Beijingnese dishes on their menu, Eastwood Garden Peking is of consistent quality and in a convenient location for us. The constant hum of patrons and queue of people in the doorway even on ‘quiet’ weeknights are among the reasons that keep us coming back.

So we start with the signature Peking duck served two ways – our second style of choice is for the remainder of the duck meat to be served as ‘sang-choi bau’ (生菜包). The accompanying pancakes are warm and soft, the hoisin sauce sweet to offset the spices used to marinate the duck, and the cucumber and spring onion segments offer crunch in an otherwise stodgy ‘wrap’. The duck skin is smooth and glistening and its only downfall is that it has been sliced with too much meat attached. This is a personal gripe of mine though as, in days gone by, common practice was to present pretty much only the skin cut into neat squares for wrapping. These days even in Asia, you will find a lot meat attached to the slices of skin when it is served.

The remaining meat from the duck is usually offered either as ‘sang-choi bau’ or stir-fried either with rice or rice vermicelli noodles at most places. We have opted for the messy choice of ‘sang-choi bau’ in this instance (definitely not date food!) with the duck meat tossed with diced onion and other crunchy bits and served on perfectly trimmed rounds of iceberg lettuce.

Mr Tokyo puts in a request for the northern Chinese specialty of hot and sour soup (酸辣湯). It arrives abundant with strips of cloud-ear fungus, firm tofu, bamboo shoots and pork as well as swirls of beaten egg. The heat comes from the very obvious use of ground white pepper, whereas I prefer it when places use chilli oil instead. Nonetheless, the contrasting texture of the smooth tangy broth with the mostly crunchy ingredients is wonderful.

In a bid to have some vegetables in our meal, we order the ‘Chinese cabbage soup with green bean vermicelli, pork and shrimp’ which is more a descriptive naming of this dish. In Chinese it is known literally as ‘sand-clay pot Chinese cabbage’ (砂鍋津白) and is in a pork broth base which gives its distinctive milky colouring. Thin slices of tender pork belly can be found throughout and I especially enjoy this dish with some rice stirred through, pseudo-congee style.

We also order the ‘King prawns in sweet chilli sauce’ which is an attempt at ‘Kung-pao prawns’ (宮保蝦球), itself a variation of ‘Kung-pao chicken’. The batter is too thick and the sauce a far cry from what it is meant to be, so it won’t be something we’ll be trying again.

We finish with a serve of ‘Snow Crab’ (塞旁蟹) which has crab meat stir-fried with eggwhite. It is served topped with a raw egg yolk which is then mixed in along with Chinese black vinegar. (Unfortunately the waitress was too quick for me and I didn’t manage to catch a ‘before’ shot.) On this occasion, the eggwhite is not as smooth as we’ve had on previous visits but I still like the slippery combination which makes for great comfort food when mixed with a bowl of plain rice.

The boys can’t say no to dessert and order a deep-fried ice-cream each. Monsieur Poisson has his au naturel whereas Mr Tokyo has his with chocolate topping. I pass on both these options as they are things I’ve left behind with my childhood, but – who knows? – I could redevelop a liking for them in the future!

Eastwood Garden Peking (伊士活)

167 Rowe St, Eastwood NSW

Tel: (02) 9804 1289

Opening Hours:  7 days  11am-10:30pm

happy eating!

Epicure Recipe Card #40: Sizzling Beef with Celery

Welcome to the first account of my Recipe Card Challenge for 2010! I’m a bit behind my planned posting schedule but I have legitimate reasons. Firstly, I started a new job just last week and, secondly, I didn’t start off tackling this challenge in quite the correct manner. Instead of planning ahead, choosing a recipe card for the week and making sure I had all the ingredients required, I kind of winged it and suddenly started panicking when I realised I should have been cooking something already.

So one night, when I had defrosted a piece of scotch fillet steak for dinner without any particular culinary direction for it, I went searching through the recipe cards on the prowl for something involving beef. What resulted was this stir-fry which couldn’t be further from what Jill Dupleix had described! I attribute my tweaking of her recipe due to my stubbornness about Cantonese stir-fries and, as always, not having all the stipulated ingredients on hand in order to follow the recipe word for word.

The stir-fry still tastes juicy and characteristically Cantonese despite my fiddling with it. My personal preference is to use beef skirt steak but, Iike I said, I just happened to have some scotch fillet steak at the ready that particular evening.

Beef Stir-fry with Shiitake & Chinese Cabbage

(adapted from The Age – Epicure 50 Best Recipe Cards, recipe by Jill Dupleix)

Ingredients:

·         250g beef, thinly sliced

·         1 portion of My All-purpose Cantonese Marinade

·         6 dried shiitake, soaked in cold water overnight (I’m lucky to have pre-soaked ones by my mother-in-law sitting in the freezer for when desired!)

·         ½ tsp sugar

·         6 medium Chinese cabbage (‘wom bok’/’wong nga bak’) leaves, shredded

·         1 tbs cooking oil

·         finely shredded ginger (optional)

·         ½ tsp salt

·         1 tbs oyster sauce

Method:

1. Toss beef with the marinade and set aside 20-30 minutes.
2. In the meantime, remove stalks from shiitake and slice the caps to about 3mm thick. Toss sliced caps with the sugar and set aside. (This helps to remove a ‘fishy/bitter’ flavour that the Chinese describe.) 

3. When ready to cook, heat the oil in a wok or saucepan to almost smoking on high heat. Add ginger, if using, for around 10 seconds before adding the beef. Stir-fry until most pieces are cooked to medium-well before removing beef from pan and setting aside.
4. Add shiitake slices to the hot pan and toss until starting to brown before adding cabbage strips and tossing the whole lot until cabbage looks half wilted. Sprinkle in salt and toss evenly.
5. Return beef to pan along with oyster sauce and stir-fry the whole lot until cooked. Serve with steamed rice.

happy cooking!