Shan's recipe for Black Pepper Beef

The recipe Shan came up with is a little different to the one we had that night but typical of this satisfying and versatile dish.
Black pepper beef (Hei Jiao Niu Liu)
Ingredients:

• 2 green peppers (change one of them to green chilli if you like it spicy)
• 1 small onion
• 250 gm fillet beef
• Asparagus (optional)
• Garlic
• Salt
• Shaoxing rice wine
• Soy sauce
• Oyster sauce
• Ground black pepper (about half a teaspoon or more depending on taste)
• 1 egg
• Half of a green (spring) onion
• Ginger (slice a piece about 0.5 cm from a chunk)

Preparation:

1. Clean and dry the beef and cut it into slices, about 3 cm long and 2 cm wide and 0.5cm thick.Put it into a soup dish.
2. Cut the green pepper into strips and slice asparagus to similar size; cut the onion to thin slices.
3. Chop green onion, garlic and ginger into fine pieces. Separate the egg white and yolk and keep the egg white.

Marinating:

Put following sauces into the soup dish with beef:

• 1 tbs of rice wine
• Soy sauce
• Oyster sauce
• Egg white

Mix with your hand (to make sure no slice of beef is folded over on itself and you can rub in the flavour better this way) and leave for 5 minutes then drain it.
Cooking:

1. Beef: Add oil in wok and put beef in when oil is hot; stir fry beef for about 2-3 minutes till you see the colour of beef change to dark brownish (it should be cooked already), turn the stove off and take the beef out.
2. Vegetables: Clean the wok and add 2 tbs of fresh oil (you don’t want vegetables to look brown), put finely chopped green onion, ginger and garlic in; stir fry for about 30 seconds or until you can smell the scent of garlic; put sliced onions in and stir fry for another 30 seconds; then add green pepper strips and asparagus slices in; add some salt and stir fry for about 1 minute, then put beef and ground pepper in and stir fry for 2-3 minutes.

Shan’s comments:

The finished dish should look refreshing with green vegetables. You can also add a small amount of sliced carrots or change one the the green pepper to half a yellow and half a red pepper to make it even more colourful and nutritious. (Eat vegetable with different colour every day is important as the different colour reflects the vitamins/minerals it contains).
See my first attempt at cooking this delicious recipe at Dishing up the beef.
Second attempt…
I tried this again on 15th September 2012 when I had become a bit more familiar with Chinese cooking.
This time I had only strips of sirloin beef and no onion so I substituted half a leek thinly sliced for the onion and I used one green pepper, one red pepper and a green chilli.
I used light soy sauce in the marinade but I added an extra dash of soy sauce and oyster sure just before serving to darken the colour a bit.
That’s the joy of this dish – you can play around with the ingredients. All my lovely fresh vegetables came from Shankill Market Fresh, a great local shop based at the Barbecue Centre in Shankill, Dublin
The finished dish was very tasty and fast and easy to produce. A grand easy dinner for a Saturday night in and goes well with Gavi di Gavi wine 🙂