Poor man's gourmet beef broccoli
Hello boys and girls, welcome to another episode of "What's Cookin'?" The hip new show featuring that handsome young fellow whose name I can't pronounce.
Our show tonight is brought to you by the letters 'N' and 'O' which reminds you to just say "No" to drugs... it'll mess you up and make you talk to an audience that's not really there... ooooh
Our curtain opens with our chef describing the dish that he is about to prepare - Beef Broccoli (translated from the scriptures of an ancient Chinese-portrayed phrasebook, "Beeef Broccori"). By the way, you can download this recipe from any www.foodthingywebsite.com because there are many variations to this dish.
Various cuts of beef have been known to have been used for this dish including flank steak, sirloin steak, and even tenderloin; but we're not going there, hence the title "Poor man's gourmet beef broccoli!" We're going to use round steak because that's what we have in the freezer. The rest of our ingredients are similarly quite simple and easily available in most major grocery stores, or perhaps even in that dark and seldom visited area of your kitchen called the pantry (dun dun dun!)
In China, they use Chinese broccoli for this dish therefore since we're here in America (for those of you following our blog in far away countries, feel free to fill in your country name here...) we'll be using _________ broccoli. Yes, that's right - good ole 100% pesticide free (except for an occassional sprinkling of DDT and other harmful products that rid of those unwanted plant bugs) American Broccoli! Or if you prefer, you can purchase your American Broccoli (here in America) at a reputable certified organic farmers market near you or grow your own.
Okay, here's the list of our ingredients:
- 1-1/2 to 2 pounds of round steak (depending on how hungry you are)
- 3/4 cup of soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon of plum sauce (this ingredient should be available at your major grocery store with Asian ingredients, or from your nearest Chinatown. If you're already in China, hey you're in luck - just reach out of your window and borrow some from your neighbor...) It's a viscous jelly type of sauce with a sweet and sour flavor made with plums or other stone fruits mixed with sugar, vinegar, ginger, and chiles. Basically it's a Chinese version of Indian Chutney.
- Zest of one lemon
- 1 1/3 tablespoon of lemon juice (that's equal to 4 teaspoons or approximately half the lemon)
- 1 julienned carrot (not to be confused with the aspiring new fashion designer duo Julie and Karet)
- 1/2 bunch of American Broccoli. For those of you trying to make logic of what half a bunch is by thinking "well, a bunch is a lot; ergo half a bunch is not that much...", and still have no clue; a bunch equals 1-1/2 to 2 pounds which yeilds about six to eight servings.
- 1 medium onion thinly sliced - figure a large onion is the size as a softball and a small onion is the size of a baseball, so somewhere in between. NOTE: do not slice the softball or baseball!
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
- 1 tablespoon of cornstarch
- cooked long grain white Japanese rice or basmati rice
Directions:
- Mix the marinade in a bowl that is big enough to hold the liquids and sliced meat. Need to look for a bowl? Go ahead - I'll wait... (one mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi, zzzz, zzzz, zzzzzzzzzzz; huh, oh hey, you're back!). Mix all the liquid ingredients of soy sauce and plum sauce. The sesame oil in the photo is a guest appearance although it's not used in this recipe. It's there for visual effects because as we are all aware - sesame seed oil conjures up ideas of Chinese authenticity. In reality our dish is a simple variation of the Chinese American version similar to what you would get at any "Golden" or "Royal" whatever restaurant.
- Next zest a lemon into the bowl as shown on this picutre; as I've mentioned several times before in past blogs (and where ever I give cooking lessons; wink, wink, nudge, nudge - you know what I'm sayin'? Eh?!), the taste of any citrus fruit is in the zest - don't pay any attention to those little notes and reminders that my wife leaves for me.
- Now squeeze the lemon half while cupping your other hand underneath to catch the seeds while letting the juice flow through between your fingers into the bowl. Savor this experience for a minute as it whisks you away to visions of lemon trees soaking in the rain and the citrusy aroma wafts through the air giving it that fresh clean scent of lemon scented Pledge... That my friends is called "aroma therapy..."
- Add a pinch of ground black pepper (a pinch is any small amount that you can hold between your fore finger and thumb; for those who have small fingers or don't have any thumb - it approximately 1/16 teaspoon)
- Slice up the meat into 1/4 inch slices on the diagonal against the grain as shown here. Slicing the meat this way ensures that you are cutting against the grain which means more tender slices (which means easier to chew; which means easier to digest; which means easier to... well, you get the picture). I can't believe he just said that...
- Place the meat in the marinade and let it soak in all that flavor while you prepare the vegetables. If you wish, you can add a shot of dry sherry (the wine not the stripper) into the bowl so the meat can "party all the time, party all the time, party all the time!"
- For the vegetables, start by peeling the carrots and cut it into small straws the size of toothpicks. Keep in mind that the thinner your carrots are, the faster they cook. Next cut up the broccoli so that you end up with small bite-sized florets. You can also cut the stem into small bite-sized pieces or about 1 inch cubes. If you have large stems, you might want to peel the skin off a little because they tend to get chewy rather than crunchy during the cooking process.
Slice up the onion in thin slices and finally finely mince the garlic. - The cooking process for this dish requires one cooking vessel and a technique most common to Chinese cuisine called Stir-fry. The cooking vessel that we are using here is The Wok (yes, the wok!) aptly named because the cooking vessel does all the wok! (you see what I did there?! now that's funny!) If you don't have a wok, you can use a large saute or fry pan. The key is to make sure that the cooking vessel is heated prior to adding the oil and any other ingredient. The object of the technique is to immediately sear in the flavors within the food by cooking the exterior of the meat immediately and have the heat radiate towards the middle to finish the cooking process. Since all of the ingredients, with the exception of the broccoli, are cut very thin, cooking them takes approximately less than 1 minute.
Start by adding the oil immediately followed by the meat into the wok (save the marinade). You should hear lots of sizzle which indicates that your cooking vessel was properly heated. If your wok or pan is not hot enough, you will boil the meat instead of stir-frying (you will go to jail, you'll not pass go, and will not collect $200 - on top of this, you will loose a turn...). Alternatively, you will most likely get a more chewy texture when you bite into the meat.
Remember to keep turning the meat so that both sides are cooked and to prevent burning the food (as in stir the pot, Marge! That's why they call it stir-frying). - Push the meat along the side of the wok to reduce the cooking temperature. The idea of the shape of the wok is temperature control. The ingredients cooking towards the center of the wok are cooking at high heat; the ingredients around the middle perimeter of the wok gets cooked at medium heat; and low heat for ingredients positioned near the top of the wok. Start Adding your vegetables starting with the onions, followed by the broccoli, and then the carrots.
- Cook the vegetables for about a minute. If the sizzle subsides, add a little bit more oil and crank up the heat a little. Continue to stir the ingredients.
- Now whisk in a tablespoon of corn starch to the marinade and make sure that it is fully incorporated. If you want to end up with lots of sauce at the bottom of the dish, you can add a cup of cold water and whisk another tablespoon of corn starch to this mixture. You will need to readjust your seasoning with Kosher salt and ground black pepper right before the end of the cooking process.
- Combine the meat and the vegetables by stirring them together and add the minced garlic. Stir, then add the marinade. Let the marinade come to a boil to thicken. Stir, stir, stir... mix, mix, mix - then adjust your seasoning prior to turning off the heat.
- Now here's where the gourmet part comes in... Grab one of those (clean) small plastic containers that they give you at fancy restaurants to take your leftovers in and serve up some rice filling half of the container. Then scoop up some of that deliciuos beef broccoli stir-fry that you just made onto the other half of the container. Sprinkle the beef broccoli with a pinch of white sesame seeds (and if you happen to have some black sesame seeds, you can sprinkle a pinch of that on top of the rice). Take step back and look at your creation and marvel at how fancy and gourmeyish it looks... If anybody asks where you got that delicious looking dish, you can tell them that you've just opened a fancy Chinese restaurant called "The Golden _______ (fill in your favorite word here)" and that this is one of the dishes in the menu. Yes, you will be perpetuating a conspiracy that you are now somehow an owner of a fancy restaurant; but it's okay. Your secret is safe with me...
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Enjoy!
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About Me
- Chef Sam Paano
- I am the co-owner and founder of Gourmet Conspiracy, a personal chef and catering service based in Lakewood, California. My objective here is to provide open communication about various types of food and their benefits towards our health. As far as my training, I graduated from Kitchen Academy in July 2007 with high honors. I have a great deal of passion about learning the cooking styles and techniques from various cultures and incorporating them in fusion dishes.
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