Recipe of the week

I never cook. I can, I just don’t enjoy it. Other people love the chemistry of it or the fun of the process or producing something epic over the space of a few hours. Me? I can’t be arsed.

Now I have a new job though, making dinner to take with me is different. Normally I’ll make up a batch of rice and a batch of meat, veg and sauce and then just tip a bit into a tupperware box every night ready to take in the next day. This has worked fine so far, except sometimes what I’m eating isn’t the most inspiring of foods.
I dug out a very old cookbook - barely a book, more of a collection of oddities I’ve gathered along the way. The one recipe that’s blown my socks off this week is:

Black Bean Beef and Rice

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon of sesame oil (I use Lee Kum Kee 李錦記)
Either 5 cloves of garlic or 2 tablespoons of ‘lazy’ ready-made garlic
2 tablespoons of grated ginger
2 tablespoons of black bean sauce with garlic (I use Amoy or Lee Kum Kee 李錦記)
Either strips of sirloin steak or steak mince - 1lb (450 grams)
2 tablespoons of Shaosing rice cooking wine
1 green pepper, cut into thin strips
1 yellow pepper, cut into thin strips
150ml beef stock (Oxo!)
Light soy sauce
Cornflour (2 tablespoons, blended with 5 tablespoons of cold water)
Rice - I prefer red ‘cargo’ rice but you can use jasmine or brown

How to make it taste good:

Rice first as we’re all multi-taskers here. I have a rice cooker so I just pour in 2 small cups of rice per person and add boiling water, a tablespoon of cumin seeds and a sparrow’s gobful of olive oil. Stick it on to cook as this could take 20 - 35 mins and the black bean beef bit will only take about 30.

Get all your other stuff done - chop and slice and mix everything ready.

Use a wok or a large pan (preferably non-stick). Slap in the sesame oil. When it gets hot enough to look like it’s smoking, throw in the garlic and ginger. Fry this for a few seconds, then whack in all the meat. If it’s mince, make sure it separates properly or you get chunks.

Glob the black bean sauce in and make sure you stir it around to try to spread it evenly through the meat. When the steak / mince is looking less red and more brown, pour in the Shaosing rice cooking wine.

Then you lump in the peppers and the stock. Boil it for about 1 minute, then add in soy sauce as strong as you like (go easy; a little goes a long way). Once it’s all mixed in and bubbling nicely, add in the mixed cornflour and stir it in to make sure it thickens evenly. Give it like a minute, then turn off the heat - you’re done.

Serve it straight away on the rice, or in a serving dish next to your little rice bowl. Ta-da!

For my next trick, I shall attempt another recipe once I’ve cherry-picked it from my scrapbook of notes.

Soopytwist, everyone.