Last night, Husband picked me up from work to go get my car after repairs. As part of the deal, I had to help him with dinner. I was instructed to look up a recipe for this dish but wasn't able to, so instead was asked to find a recipe for a basic Chinese brown sauce. We decided to start with this one and then modified it for what he had in mind. He wrote most of this post. I only wrote down the sauce ingredients and instructions.
Introduction:
This recipe was inspired by a signature dish served at Bamboo Restaurant in Bedford, MA. I enjoyed it enough to want to share it with my family.
On the Heat:
It is tamed down from the chili peppers due to being a recipe for mixed palates. The slices of ginger do add some heat without it being pepper-hot. Due to the overall volume of food involved, the pepper, peppercorns, and chili powder spread out the heat more evenly than having whole chili peppers.
On the Ginger:
Ginger is, like most spices, intangibly healthy for you. It belongs in your diet, and calms your stomach. This is definitely the main draw of the dish for me.
On the Meat:
Chuck roast is a cheap, stewing meat. It is difficult to create a meal with an inexpensive cut of beef. Paying for ribeye steaks isn't always in everyone's weekly dinner budget, so this was a surprisingly enjoyable meal for 1/4 the cost per pound for beef. It could certainly be made with more expensive cuts of beef, however.
Ingredients
2 pounds chuck roast
1/2 tablespoon sesame seeds
2 bell peppers
1/2 large sweet onion
1/2 cup thinly sliced fresh ginger
2-4 tbsp vegetable or peanut oil
1/4 tsp sesame oil
2 pounds green beans
rice
Sauce
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/3 cup cooking sherry
4 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
2 tablespoon cooking oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/3 to 1/2 cup finely chopped fresh ginger
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup water
To make the sauce:
- Heat cooking oil and add garlic and ginger for about 30 seconds.
- Combine soy sauce, chicken broth, cooking sherry, brown sugar, sesame oil, white pepper, peppercorns and chili powder in a separate container. Add this mixture to the cooking oil after briefly mixing.
- While this mixture is cooking, combine the cornstarch and water in a separate container.
- Once the sauce is boiling, stir in the cornstarch mixture.
- Slice into thin strips, aim for the length of your green beans. Under 1/4 inch in thickness
- When working with chuck roast, if there are fibrous portions in it, since you're slicing it up anyway, make sure you cut the tough bits out ahead of time.
- Add the meat to the sauce and simmer for perhaps 20 minutes.
- Make sure to stir the meat occasionally to ensure even cooking.
- Once the meat is cooked, add the sesame seeds
Vegetable preparation:
- Slice the ginger to 1/8th inch medallions.
- Chop the bell pepper into short strips.
- Chop the onion similarly to the bell pepper.
- Heat a wok to high and add vegetable or peanut oil enough to stir-fry, and 1/4 tsp of sesame oil. At these temperatures, some oils will smoke.
- Cook the ginger and onion together and first for about seven minutes
- Add the green beans* and bell peppers and cook together for another ten minutes.
- The onion should be translucent, the green beans a brighter green and swollen, and the ginger should be tender, having soaked up some of the liquid from the onion. The bell pepper should be shiny and somewhat firm.
*Adding the green beans to this isn't what happened the first time this was cooked. This is a modification to help in the future. The green beans were unsuccessfully steamed when they needed to be stir-fried.
