Ginger Beef

It's a new year and I'm getting back into cooking and trying new recipes, which I'll be honest, after the excesses of Christmas I'm more than ready to do. I've made this recipe is part of my 52 Recipes, 52 Weeks challenge that I mentioned yesterday.

I received the book Gok Cooks Chinese for my birthday a few months ago and this is the first thing I have tried from it. I picked the book mainly due to the amount of great reviews on Amazon as I've tended to stray from celebrity-type cookbooks in the past couple of years as I've found them a bit so-so however I thought I'd take a punt with this one as people seemed to be raving about it. I have to say, there are quite a few things I want to cook but I thought I'd start with something quick and easy.

The Ginger Beef recipe is intended to be a naked version of the old favourite crispy shredded beef - which I love.  I was won over because the majority of the ingredients required are store-cupboard meaning all I need to go and buy were the steaks and the spring onions, which made it a good meal for after work as I could nip to the shops on my lunch break. 

It didn't take long to prep, apart from the chopping but I find that all very therapeutic anyway and cooking was very quick. Our verdict? This meal was very tasty and definitely something that I will be making again. The beef didn't really crisp up as much as I would have liked but the flavour was really good and we both really enjoyed it (even though I forgot to garnish with the chilli flakes).  Result!

The recipe below serves two and is adapted to the ingredients and methods I used.

Ginger Beef

Ingredients

2 tbsp cornflour

salt and ground white pepper

400g rump steak

6 tbsp groundnut oil

4cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

3 spring onions, chopped

1 medium carrot, peeled and cut into thin matchsticks

2 tbsp light soy sauce

1/2 tsp caster sugar

1 tsp sesame oil

1.5 tsp rice vinegar

chilli flakes to garnish

Method

Put the cornflour into a bowl and season generously with salt and ground white pepper. Trim the fat off the steak and slice into thin strips (about 0.5cm). Pop the beef strips into the bowl and dust it well in the flour.

Heat the groundnut oil in a large wok and add the beef strips (shaking off any excess flour first) and cook until just crisp on the outside. If you need to, do this in batches - I did it in two batches. Drain the beef strips on kitchen paper and set to one side. 

Clean out the wok and add a tbsp of oil. Add the ginger, garlic, spring onions and carrot to the wok and fry over a high heat for 1 minute until aromatic. Add the soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, vinegar, a pinch of ground white pepper and 3 tbsp of water to create a sauce for the beef. Heat until the sugar has dissolved. At this point you may want to taste the sauce and adjust the flavours if necessary  I didn't find I needed to add anything ut you can add more sugar or vinegar to taste.

Put the beef strips back into the wok and mix everything together gently. Remove from the heat and sprinkle some chilli flakes over the top to garnish. Serve with rice.

I served this with just plain white steamed rice but it would be lovely with egg fried so might do that next time.

Can't wait to try something else from the Gok book now!