Saturday morning! Is there anything better?
I mean, really. It’s a beautiful sunny day in city that’s full of them. Let’s make the most of it.
First things first. Haircut. I look like Australopithecus.
Post-shearing, I’m alone in an empty house. Wife and son have scampered off to our local Temple of Unpleasantness.
Maybe I can put lunch in front of them when they get home.
We’ve recently received a shipment of veggies from L.O.V.E. Delivery, so I have a ton of options. A quick peek in The Freezer, and a package of “fajita/stirfry beef” is staring me in the face. Works for me. I’ve been wanting to make a stirfry for a while. My wok hasn’t been used in ages, and it’s starting to get despondent.
My Google Fu yields this. It’s just about perfect.
I set the stirfry package to thaw in water, with a trickle from the tap giving me a little convection current to speed the process. I hate to do it, as we’re in a drought and living like fremen, so I kill the trickle before it’s fully thawed.
The meat. I check my Cut/Wrap sheet, and my stirfry meat is bottom round. After de-packaging, this becomes apparent. It’s pre-sliced by the butcher and ready to rock. Frankly, it looks a lot like my jerky did before I cured it.
Time to cook. The mise:
This recipe uses a sweet Japanese wine called mirin that I’ve never used before. I’m intrigued.
I enjoy sake. I wonder what this stuff’s like?
It's like that.
Don’t try this at home. It’s crazy sweet.
I build the sauce base out of mirin, o.j., soy sauce, brown rice vinegar, red pepper and water. Broccoli and edamame are prepped and standing by (note to self: use frozen, already-shelled edamame next time. Shelling this much edamame is a pain). Beef’s ready. Oil and aromatics (just garlic) ready to go in first.
Stirfry is like a train (choo choo, not wedding dress). Everything’s living in the same cooking vessel, so you have to manage your workflow pretty carefully to make sure nothing burns and everything gets done at the same time. The prep is very nearly as important as the actual time spent in front of the wok. Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance.
I light the fire under the wok. Oil in. Minutes later I flick a little water in there, and it does the happy dance. Beef in, and the train pulls away from the station.
Beef has some color on it, but I don’t want to cook it all the way yet, otherwise it’ll either be overdone when the veggies are finished, or it’ll be cold. Out it comes, and onto a plate. Little more oil. Minced garlic in.
I smell garlic. In go the edamame and broccoli. The recipe calls for some other greenery, but I didn’t use it because a) I didn’t have them, and b) I don’t wanna. Stir, stir, stir.
Veggies are a little soft. In goes my sauce (which I mixed beforehand and had standing by. You can’t add individual liquids sequentially in a stifry, or they’ll evaporate at different rates. Also, it takes forever. Prep!)
I let the sauce reduce a little, then add some cornstarch-in-water to help it thicken, and follow up by adding the beef back in to finish cooking.
I have a moment to breathe, so I take a photo.
I cook another few minutes. The beef is done and everything looks great, except I have way too much sauce, and it’s way too runny. Probably because I omitted approximately half my veggies. That’s cool. I have a friend who can fix this, and his name is cornstarch.
Soon, all is right with the world.
But soft! What sound through yonder back door breaks? It is the garage door opener. And my wife and son are back from the dreaded mall.
Just in time for lunch.
I also had brown rice going on a back burner. Did I mention that?
Verdict: We really enjoyed it. It was really bright and lovely, and the sauce complemented but didn’t overpower the beef. Add in the edamame and it’s a protein bonanza, which is fantastic if you’re trying to build muscle mass (which I’m not, and furthermore find hilarious) or just like edamame (which I do). Also, broccoli is a bona fide superfood. For example, a half cup of broccoli has more Vitamin C than an orange. Your mama was right, broccoli is crazy good for you.
It was a relatively quick, healthy meal, and pretty easy to do provided you prep well. We’re gonna do something like this again.
And now, a new feature – The Wife Says. No, I’m not trying to get all Of Mice And Men on you, but my lovely wife is a bit twitchy about me plastering her name all over the interwebs.
Anyway, it’s easy for me to say everything I make is fabulous, so I’m introducing a slightly less biased opinion. Hence the new feature.
And The Wife Says: Seven stars out of ten. She enjoyed the meal. It was a solid outing in the stirfry realm, and something she thinks I could definitely master if I did it more. She ate leftovers. That’s something.
Next up: kofta kebabs.
