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ysabetwordsmith) wrote2021-02-09 08:41 pm
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2021-02-09 08:41 pm
Recipe: "Bell Pepper Beef"
Tonight I made my first attempt at composing a wok recipe from scratch, using available ingredients and past experiences for inspiration. We had half a bell pepper, so I decided to make a version of pepper beef. It went pretty well, although there are a few things we'd like to tweak on future occasions.
"Bell Pepper Beef"
Ingredients:
Sauce:
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
Stir-fry:
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 thumb ginger, minced
1/2 bell pepper, bite-sized pieces
1/2 onion, sliced
1 can bamboo shoots, drained
1 pound stir-fry beef strips
Directions:
In a small bowl, mix together the sauce ingredients: 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, 1 tablespoon corn starch, and 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper. Set aside.
Mince 2 cloves of garlic. Mince 1 thumb of ginger. Combine in a small bowl and set aside.
Cut half a bell pepper into bite-sized pieces. An easy way to do this is first cut it into strips, then cut the strips into thirds or quarters.
Slice half an onion and set it aside. This will break down into crescents when cooked.
Drain the can of bamboo shoots.
Cut the beef strips in half. With paper-thin stir-fry slices, it helps to separate them beforehand and pile them in a bowl.
Heat the wok. Add 2 tablespoons sunflower oil, minced garlic, and minced ginger. Stir-fry briefly.
Add the chopped bell pepper. Stir-fry until tender. This takes a substantial amount of time. Switch hands if your arms get tired.
When the bell peppers are tender, add the sliced onion. Stir-fry until the onions separate and become translucent.
Add the drained bamboo shoots and stir-fry until they warm up and become fragrant.
Add the beef strips. Stir-fry briefly until the beef browns.
Pour the sauce over the top of the beef and vegetables. At first it will pool in the bottom. Stir-fry until it turns glossy and thick.
Remove wok from heat. Serve bell pepper beef over rice or noodles.
Observations:
I only used 1 tablespoon of soy sauce and did not add any more salt. This way, the soy sauce added some deep, savory notes to the dish but did not make everything taste like soy sauce. This allowed the flavors of the individual ingredients to shine through more. But it still has that nice Chinese smell.
I really like the rice vinegar. It adds a bright, high note when combined with the dark, savory ingredients to make the sauce much more complex and interesting.
We love the roasty, nutty flavor and smell of sesame oil. It works very well with dark, robust flavors.
Black pepper adds a little heat. If you like "pepper beef" type recipes, then you could add quite a lot more to make this a spicy dish. Green peppercorns would also work to pick up green notes from the bell pepper.
The sauce thickened up beautifully and had a wonderful, complex flavor. Previously I've had little success using cornstarch as a thickener, but something about the wok and/or Chinese ingredients makes it behave much better.
When you sauté roughly equal amounts of fresh garlic and ginger root together, they marry and mellow into something flavorful and complex, tempering the funkiness of the garlic and the sharpness of the ginger. This greatly adds to the complexity and excitement of the dish. It's one place where taking the extra time to prepare fresh ingredients makes a pretty dramatic difference in quality.
Bell pepper takes quite a long time to cook if you want it really soft. We were hungry so we didn't let it cook as long as would have been ideal. Next time I might cut it down a little smaller to help speed up the cooking time a bit.
Half-slices of onion in a wok break down into crescents pretty quickly. How long you cook these depends on how done you want them. Ours were closer to ideal than the bell pepper. Next time I will probably throw in a splash of mirin to help them caramelize and to balance the vinegar, and cook the onions a little longer.
At this stage, we had a really nice balance of ingredients. Half a bell pepper and half an onion work well together. I'm not a huge fan of peppers and onions, but they mellowed into something pleasing here. If you love peppers and onions as a topping for things, wokking them is a very good way to make a batch.
Adding the bamboo shoots threw off the balance a little bit, because it was roughly the same amount as either of the others, leaving even thirds -- but two of those thirds were pale and one was green. If you want to star the bell pepper in this recipe, you may want to use a whole one or omit the bamboo shoots.
https://drhealthbenefits.com/food-bevarages/vegetables/health-benefits-of-bamboo-shoot
Adding the meat threw the balance way off. We got a pound of beef sliced into paper-thin strips, because that's what was available, and it meant somewhat more meat than vegetables. A better approach, if available, would be taking two or three of our usual palm-size steaklets and cutting those into finger-size strips or bite-size chunks.
While the vegetables could've been a little more done, and the balance of vegetables and meat was imperfect, the overall dish came out well. The flavor was especially nice. You could really taste all the different ingredients. I think with a few tweaks, it will be even better.
There is a lot left over, so the current plan is to reheat that tomorrow as tortilla filling. The recipe as it stands could feed four people.
"Bell Pepper Beef"
Ingredients:
Sauce:
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
Stir-fry:
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 thumb ginger, minced
1/2 bell pepper, bite-sized pieces
1/2 onion, sliced
1 can bamboo shoots, drained
1 pound stir-fry beef strips
Directions:
In a small bowl, mix together the sauce ingredients: 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, 1 tablespoon corn starch, and 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper. Set aside.
Mince 2 cloves of garlic. Mince 1 thumb of ginger. Combine in a small bowl and set aside.
Cut half a bell pepper into bite-sized pieces. An easy way to do this is first cut it into strips, then cut the strips into thirds or quarters.
Slice half an onion and set it aside. This will break down into crescents when cooked.
Drain the can of bamboo shoots.
Cut the beef strips in half. With paper-thin stir-fry slices, it helps to separate them beforehand and pile them in a bowl.
Heat the wok. Add 2 tablespoons sunflower oil, minced garlic, and minced ginger. Stir-fry briefly.
Add the chopped bell pepper. Stir-fry until tender. This takes a substantial amount of time. Switch hands if your arms get tired.
When the bell peppers are tender, add the sliced onion. Stir-fry until the onions separate and become translucent.
Add the drained bamboo shoots and stir-fry until they warm up and become fragrant.
Add the beef strips. Stir-fry briefly until the beef browns.
Pour the sauce over the top of the beef and vegetables. At first it will pool in the bottom. Stir-fry until it turns glossy and thick.
Remove wok from heat. Serve bell pepper beef over rice or noodles.
Observations:
I only used 1 tablespoon of soy sauce and did not add any more salt. This way, the soy sauce added some deep, savory notes to the dish but did not make everything taste like soy sauce. This allowed the flavors of the individual ingredients to shine through more. But it still has that nice Chinese smell.
I really like the rice vinegar. It adds a bright, high note when combined with the dark, savory ingredients to make the sauce much more complex and interesting.
We love the roasty, nutty flavor and smell of sesame oil. It works very well with dark, robust flavors.
Black pepper adds a little heat. If you like "pepper beef" type recipes, then you could add quite a lot more to make this a spicy dish. Green peppercorns would also work to pick up green notes from the bell pepper.
The sauce thickened up beautifully and had a wonderful, complex flavor. Previously I've had little success using cornstarch as a thickener, but something about the wok and/or Chinese ingredients makes it behave much better.
When you sauté roughly equal amounts of fresh garlic and ginger root together, they marry and mellow into something flavorful and complex, tempering the funkiness of the garlic and the sharpness of the ginger. This greatly adds to the complexity and excitement of the dish. It's one place where taking the extra time to prepare fresh ingredients makes a pretty dramatic difference in quality.
Bell pepper takes quite a long time to cook if you want it really soft. We were hungry so we didn't let it cook as long as would have been ideal. Next time I might cut it down a little smaller to help speed up the cooking time a bit.
Half-slices of onion in a wok break down into crescents pretty quickly. How long you cook these depends on how done you want them. Ours were closer to ideal than the bell pepper. Next time I will probably throw in a splash of mirin to help them caramelize and to balance the vinegar, and cook the onions a little longer.
At this stage, we had a really nice balance of ingredients. Half a bell pepper and half an onion work well together. I'm not a huge fan of peppers and onions, but they mellowed into something pleasing here. If you love peppers and onions as a topping for things, wokking them is a very good way to make a batch.
Adding the bamboo shoots threw off the balance a little bit, because it was roughly the same amount as either of the others, leaving even thirds -- but two of those thirds were pale and one was green. If you want to star the bell pepper in this recipe, you may want to use a whole one or omit the bamboo shoots.
https://drhealthbenefits.com/food-bevarages/vegetables/health-benefits-of-bamboo-shoot
Adding the meat threw the balance way off. We got a pound of beef sliced into paper-thin strips, because that's what was available, and it meant somewhat more meat than vegetables. A better approach, if available, would be taking two or three of our usual palm-size steaklets and cutting those into finger-size strips or bite-size chunks.
While the vegetables could've been a little more done, and the balance of vegetables and meat was imperfect, the overall dish came out well. The flavor was especially nice. You could really taste all the different ingredients. I think with a few tweaks, it will be even better.
There is a lot left over, so the current plan is to reheat that tomorrow as tortilla filling. The recipe as it stands could feed four people.
Re: Cooking note
That is purely a matter of personal taste. Some people like vegetables raw, some very slightly cooked, some cooked soft; and it can differ with individual vegetables. I'm not a fan of the nearly-raw vegetables in some Chinese dishes, and one perk of making things at home is we can cook them as much as we want. Or as little, in the case of beef that we like on the rare side.
>> With more experience, you'll come to have a better idea of how small to cut up the vegetables and how long to cook them to reach that point.<<
That's what I figure.
>> Another relevant common technique is, before thickening the sauce, to pop a lid on the wok and simmer briefly by way of steaming the vegetables some. <<
We tried that with the chicken and it worked less well than this approach.
>> Another standard of Chinese cuisine in general is in line with your general dietary approach: smaller amounts of meat and larger amounts of vegetables. 2-4 oz of meat per person is usually more than adequate. Enough vegetables to make it filling, and an appropriate amount of starch. <<
Yeah. The meat selection was not optimum here, but it's what was available. If I have to work with the same meat again -- it wasn't bad meat, just needed different handling -- I'd probably use only half the package and definitely separate the slices before adding them to the wok.
I like meat. I'm happy to eat it by the slab on occasion. But for stir-fry, I want a one-pot meal, and that usually means a small amount of meat in a larger amount of vegetables. There's nothing wrong with a wok dish that's mostly meat, but I'd want other things on the side then.
Re: Cooking note
Point well taken. I'm just going with what this Hungry Ghost has observed as I enjoy and cook the cuisine.
>> We tried that with the chicken and it worked less well than this approach. <<
Taking a look at the recipe, I didn't see anything there that would require that; no surprise to me that it wasn't as successful. I mainly reserve that for things like broccoli (standard or Chinese), green beans (regular or Chinese long beans), and sometimes cabbage or bok choi, which do much better with some steaming time.
>> I like meat. I'm happy to eat it by the slab on occasion. <<
Us, too. If we ever get together, I'll gladly patronize any good BBQ joint in the area we meet up in.
Re: Cooking note
I've explored many Chinese dishes in restaurants, and for that matter, many cuisines in general. With Chinese, it can be tricky to navigate across levels of quality, and the spectrum between traditional Chinese vs. Chinese-American styles. I have often heard people complain that the vegetables are undercooked, and not uncommonly that they are overcooked.
With onions and peppers in particular, I want them well cooked because I just don't like the flavor when they're raw or lightly cooked. People who like them raw probably want them less-cooked in a stir-fry.
On the other hoof, I have no problem with sliced ginger in my stir-fry, but Doug wasn't fond of either the taste explosion or the texture, so it's back to dicing on that. I have to admit that garlic and ginger marry better when diced than when sliced.
>>I mainly reserve that for things like broccoli (standard or Chinese), green beans (regular or Chinese long beans), and sometimes cabbage or bok choi, which do much better with some steaming time.<<
I do want to try bok choi, which I have liked in restaurant recipes. I'll try to remember that it likes steaming.
>>Us, too. If we ever get together, I'll gladly patronize any good BBQ joint in the area we meet up in.<<
Should that ever happen, there are -- or were -- two truly splendid ones in the area: Black Dog in Champaign and Smokey's in Charleston.
Re: Cooking note
Yeah, that, too. We have so many good examples out here that I can get a good idea of how it's supposed to be done. And enough population that (at least B.C.) a preliminary evaluation based on the fraction of diners representing the cuisine's cultural origin correlates fairly well.
>> I have often heard people complain that the vegetables are undercooked, and not uncommonly that they are overcooked. <<
In other words, "this isn't what I'm used to, and I don't like it." Meanwhile, I'm over here saying "This is different. (How) does it work? Does it work for me?" You too, I'd imagine.
>> Should that ever happen, there are -- or were -- two truly splendid ones in the area: Black Dog in Champaign and Smokey's in Charleston. <<
Will keep that in mind. If you ever get out this way, there's a local place that is an absolutely Californian take while still "doing it right". Proprietor and executive chef is from a Vietnamese refugee family, who decided he was so interested in BBQ to learn from the masters and then make it his own. And if you want the "customary" brick-oven stuff where you get the white bread to soak up the extra sauce while you sit at the fifty-plus-year-old tables in a place not too much bigger than the kitchen, I'll take you up to Everett & Jones in Berkeley. That's an hour or so from here when traffic is good -- which it won't be most of the time by whenever you might get out here -- but still worth the trip.