Crispy Chilli Beef

Shananigans Crispy Chilli Beef Gets a Makeover

I’ve been going through the blog this weekend to decide which recipes to include in the Taste of China Demo at Donnybrook Fair Cookery School on the evening of Wednesday 3rd July when chef Robert Jacob will cook a selection of Chinese dishes while I talk through the techniques of Chinese cooking and regional variations in cuisine.
Robert is one of the great “foodie” friends I’ve made through the blog and Twitter. He was a fashion designer before he became a chef and has worked with Ross Lewis in Chapter One and Paul Kelly in The Merrion. You can read Marie Claire Digby’s recent True Character profile of him for the Irish Times Magazine here. Before we got to know one another I attended a course he gave in knife skills so I owe any ability I have to dice and slice to him.
It’s a real privilege to team up with Robert for this class which is a first for Shananigans.
It’s less than 11 months since I started the blog and it’s always intriguing to see what recipes readers return to again and again. It gives me particular pleasure when I discover that one of the many lovely people I have met though the blog has taken one of the recipes and given it her own twist.
The crispy chilli beef recipe that I posted last November has been consistently one of the most popular recipes. Before I started the blog I would occasionally order something similar from the local Chinese takeaway but I always regretted it afterwards because it left me feeling heavy and bloated. So I had set out to create a lighter version at home using egg white and potato flour for the batter which makes it suitable for coeliacs and the wheat intolerant.
One of my most supportive readers Marie McKenna has taken the recipe a step further by adding pak choi. Sometimes she substitutes chicken for the beef or adds whatever other vegetables she has to hand. She sent me the two photos below of her results which I have reproduced with her permission.
I made crispy chilli beef for dinner for last night and we really loved the addition of the pak choi so I’ve tweaked the recipe to include it and made a few other minor changes. Thank you Marie for the inspiration and the photos. That’s what these recipes are for – to be shared and adapted.
Shananigans Crispy Chilli Beef – Xiang ciu niu rou pian – 香脆牛肉片

Photo courtesy of Marie McKenna
Serves 3 – 4

Ingredients:

400g sirloin steak or bavette of beef
2 egg whites, beaten
Good pinch of salt
About 4 tbs potato flour
A pinch of baking powder
Oil for deep frying – use good quality sunflower or groundnut oil
2 carrots cut into thin matchsticks
2 heads pak choi, root removed and trimmed (optional)
2 spring onions thinly sliced at steep angles
1 garlic clove, chopped
2 red chillies, de-seeded and thinly sliced at steep angles
About 80 g caster sugar
3 tbs Chinese black vinegar
2 tbs light soy sauce
Roasted sesame seeds (optional) to garnish
Coriander (optional) to garnish
Rice to serve

Preparation:

Cut the beef into slices against the grain and then into thin shreds.
Dip in the egg white and mix with your hand, leaving it to rest for a few minutes.
Mix the potato flour with salt and baking powder.
Drain off any excess egg white and dip the beef strips in the flour mix, shaking off any excess.

Cooking:

Blanch the carrots in boiling water for one minute,
Fill a wok quarter full with oil and heat to 180 degrees (or until a piece of bread fries golden brown in 15 seconds).
Add the beef quickly, stirring using long wooden chopsticks, a Chinese “spade” or a spatula to separate the strands. Cook the beef for 3 – 4 minutes, stirring to keep the strands separate, until it is really crispy.
Remove with a mesh strainer or slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper.
Pour the oil from the wok leaving about 1 tbs.
Reheat the remaining oil over a medium/high heat. Stir fry the pak choi, if using, for a few minutes until wilted. Remove with a slotted spoon and place on a warm serving dish
Add another small amount of oil to the wok and re-heat over a medium/high heat. Add the spring onion, garlic and chilli and stir-fry for a few moments to release the aromas.
Increase the heat to high, add the beef and carrots and stir to mix and heat through.
Add the sugar, soy sauce and vinegar and stir to combine and dissolve the sugar. When heated through and bubbling, serve on top of the pak choi, if using.
Garnish with coriander and/or lightly toasted sesame seeds, if using, and serve with steamed rice.

Variations:

Photo courtesy of Marie McKenna
You can use almost any steak in this dish. At the start I used to use fillet steak but it is not necessary to have such an expensive cut. I find bavette of beef (also known as flank steak), which is available at good butchers, is a drier cut which responds particularly well to this recipe. It is also much better value. Sirloin works well and last night I used rib eye because I had two left over from a BBQ during the week.
Chicken thigh or breast can be used instead of beef and the chicken strips will take a little less time to cook.
Chinkiang Chinese black vinegar is readily available in all Asian supermarkets here and in some good grocers. It has excellent flavour. Last night I used aged Chinese vinegar – lao chen cu – which I brought back from Beijing. It is the type used as a dipping sauce for dumplings in China. The result was tangy and delicious. If you cant get hold of Chinese vinegar, use aged balsamic vinegar. The result wont be quite as authentic but it will still taste good.
If you are not using pak choi, you could serve this with a green vegetable such as steamed tender stem broccoli, or add a few green beans or broccoli florets to the stir fry.

Favourite Shananigans Recipes from 2012

We have had a traumatic start to 2013. New Year’s Day dawned fresh and shiny and we celebrated in Duncannon by preparing a farewell meal for Shane who was returning to China later that week. It was a cheerful, happy occasion attended by 13 of my family including my mother, brothers and their children.
Sadly, just two days later, we lost my mother-in-law, a special woman who I paid tribute to in “In Memory of Alice”. Shane had just returned to Beijing, reeling from the loss of his beloved Gran, when Baby Shananigans attempted to make a premature arrival. Shan’s due date is 22nd February and she is holding on for now. We love you dearly Baby Shananigans and are really looking forward to meeting you but we can wait a little while longer. Honest!

As a result of this and a number of other family matters I’ve been preoccupied for the past week and I haven’t had time to write. But I’ve found cooking therapeutic. Tasty, nourishing food is a physical necessity when the going gets rough and I’ve discovered that Chinese spices can awaken senses that are numbed by shock and worry.
During the last few days, I found myself returning to some of my favourite recipes from 2012, accessing them on my iPhone or iPad when out and about so that I could identify the ingredients I needed to rustle up a meal that evening. I have lots of new recipes to share with you as soon as I re-group and some exciting plans to celebrate the Chinese New Year in mid February but meanwhile I thought it would be useful to remind you of the links to the recipes that got the most positive reaction since I started the blog at the end of last July and to which readers return again and again.
Stir-fried beef
Beef recipes are always popular, especially those that are similar to dishes available on Chinese take-away menus but are lighter and fresh-tasting. These dishes have become firm favourites with readers and I love when I hear that you have come up with your own variations. Recently I’ve taken to using bavette of beef in these dishes because it is great value and has a lovely texture. Sirloin and fillet also work well.

Pork cooked many ways
Pork is a staple in Chinese cooking and Chinese cooks have perfected techniques over the centuries for making even the cheapest cuts taste tender and delicious. My most popular pork recipes so far are all inspired by traditional Sichuan or Hunan recipes and variations of them can be found on the menu of the China Sichuan restaurant in Dublin whose chef gave me the fish-fragrant pork recipe below.

Lamb
Lamb dishes are particularly prevalent in Xinjiang province where Shan was born and her family still live. In that far western province of China the influence of the Uighur Muslim community is strong. These two recipes came from Shan and her MaMa and make for simple, satisfying everyday meals.

Lamb rice served in Urumqi, Xinjiang Provicne

Chicken
Shan’s Big Plate chicken is already the stuff of family legend and is the dish she and Shane use to celebrate the Full Moon Festival. Lemon chicken is a more traditional Cantonese dish and the version below is simple, tangy and light.

Seafood
I have had great fun experimenting with giving a Chinese twist to our wonderful Irish seafood. Sichuan Seafood Duncannon Style was included in Goodalls Modern Irish Cookbook, much to my delight. I also stumbled on an interesting way of using Flahavan’s Multi-seed Oatmeal in salt and pepper seafood dishes.

Starters and light supper dishes

Preparing spring rolls — Preparing Spring Rolls

Finger food Chinese style and light supper dishes can be great fun to make at home. Pot-sticker dumplings are strongly associated with celebration of the Chinese New Year where you will find them laid out on every surface ready to be cooked. For our New Year’s lunch in Duncannon I made large quantities of duck pancakes and spring rolls as a starter. They were all gobbled by appreciative adults and children. Noodles symbolise longevity in China and the Dan Dan noodle recipe below is one of those staples that I prepare whenever I need a fix of Sichuan pepper.

Experiments

Apart from learning how to cook some of the better known dishes of China, I’ve also had fun using new and lesser known cuts of meat. Thanks to Pat Whelan of James Whelan Butchers I’ve tried several ways of cooking his wonderful wagyu beef from his herd at Garrentemple, Co. Tipperary. I ended up having my wagyu stew tasted by local celebrity chefs live on The Sue Nunn Show on KCLR during the Savour Kilkenny festival. And with the help of many chefs who are friends on Twitter, especially Tom Walsh of Samphire at the Waterside, Donabate and Niall O’Sullivan of Isabel’s in Dublin, I have discovered some unusual ways to cook pig’s cheeks and short beef ribs (also knows as Jacobs Ladder).

And finally – where it all began

I doubt if I would ever have started this blog if Shan hadn’t chosen a side dish of fried green beans in a Sichuan restaurant on our first night in Beijing last June. That was also the day she and Shane revealed to us that Baby Shananigans was on the way but that’s a whole other story. 🙂
The Sichuan peppercorns exploded in my mouth, the dried facing heaven chillies added heat, the crunchy Sichuan preserved vegetable yai cai added texture and flavour, and of course the magic trinity of garlic, ginger and spring onions provided their subtle notes. Combined they elevated this simple vegetable out of the ordinary. It was in that moment that I decided I wanted to learn and write about Chinese food. I made fried green beans as a side dish at home the other night using the yai cai, Sichuan pepper and dried chillies Shan’s MaMa sent home to me with Shane at Christmas. Comfort food to awaken the senses.
I hope you continue to enjoy the blog during 2013 and thank you for your encouragement and support.
Julie
P.S. Don’t forget you can find a convenient list of equipment and ingredients in Chinese Kitchen Essentials

Hunan Style Crispy Chilli Beef

We amateur cooks are very lucky here in Ireland to have so many options if we want to improve our skills. Apart from a great selection of home-grown food programmes on TV, with our very own celebrity chefs, there are places right across the country offering courses to suit all tastes and levels of ability . These include venues like the Dublin Cookery School and Cooks Academy whose courses range from an evening to several months and cookery schools attached to restaurants and hotels where well known chefs share their expertise and secrets. Food Festivals like Savour Kilkenny, which I attended last month, are also a great opportunity to see well-known chefs demonstrate their skills in action.
Over the past month or so I’ve managed to sample a small selection of what is on offer. This included a demonstration of authentic Thai cooking, the Butchery Demonstration I described in the last post, an evening knife skills course (much needed – at least I can now julienne a carrot and finely dice garlic and ginger!) and a two day master class with Chef Paul Flynn at the Tannery Cookery School. I rounded it off last Saturday with a visit to the Miele Gallery for a demonstration of steam cooking by Rozanne Stevens which led to a serious bout of kitchen envy.
Apart from picking up some new techniques and tips, I’ve gotten a number of insights which I’ve begun to distil and integrate into my approach to cooking and which I hope will boost my confidence in the kitchen. I’m especially grateful to Paul Flynn of The Tannery for sharing something of his 30 years of expertise in the kitchen, with good humour and style. The seven most important lessons I’ve learned or had re-inforced are:

Trust your instincts and your tastebuds – stop using a recipe like a crutch, all amounts for ingredients and all temperatures are approximate, taste and taste again until you are satisfied with the balance of hot, sweet, sour and savoury. This is true of all cuisines but is especially the case when cooking Thai or Chinese food and is the way Shan and her mother cook. At very best the recipe should only be used as a guide.
Be courageous and experiment – use your instincts to vary a recipe or come up with new ones, become confident in your knowledge of what foods go well with one another, watch for the marriages made in heaven, know what herbs go with what meats or fish for instance and learn to layer flavour on flavour. When something doesn’t quite work out, reflect on what went wrong and try again.
Most expensive is not always best – this is especially true where meat is concerned. Any part of the animal that moves is likely to be tastier than the parts that don’t move. So chicken thigh will be tastier than breast, pork shoulder more full of flavour than fillet and there are a whole host of tender tasty beef cuts I didn’t even know existed that can outperform the more expensive cuts.
Think local – whenever you can, eat the food of the place prepared by the people of the place. This is the best way of ensuring the quality and freshness of your raw material, sustaining jobs and traditional food producing skills in your local community and is often better value too.
Pay attention to preparation – take the stress out of cooking by getting as much as possible done in advance. Think through all the shortcuts that you can take so that you can enjoy the last minute preparation of your meal for family or friends.
Tidy up as you go – now you wouldn’t think I’d taken that to heart if you saw the state of my kitchen last night but I was struck by the attention all the chefs I’ve seen in action pay to keeping their workstation tidy and to hygiene and food safety. I’m working on being a less messy cook….
Hate waste – plan your shopping ahead for what you intend to cook and see every by-product of your cooking as having potential – left over stock or cooking juices as a base for soup for instance or rice as a base for fried rice the next day. Throw vegetable trimmings into a freezer bag to use the next time you make stock.

So I arrived back from Dungarvan with a head full of ideas, an iPad full of new recipes, buzzing with enthusiasm and longing to get back into the kitchen again. Before I headed to the shops, I grabbed the first of my Chinese cookbooks that came to hand, Exploring China, A Culinary Adventure from Ken Hom and Ching-He Huang’s recent BBC series and I took a quick look at what was left over in the fridge – a few cooked duck legs and some carrots.
This is what I rustled together for a quick and tasty Saturday night supper:

Pancakes filled with shredded duck and a Sichuan-style sauce (recipe to follow)
A sweet, spicy, zesty Crispy Chilli Beef with an orange sauce and peanut garnish – this is based on a Hunan-style recipe from Ching-He Huang but adapted to the method I’ve used to cook Crispy Chilli Beef successfully in the past ,which has proved to be the most popular recipe on the blog so far
A sweet cucumber pickle similar to a recipe Paul Flynn’s showed us but using Chinese white rice wine vinegar rather than ordinary white wine vinegar, and
Beetroot relish (recipe to follow), a Chinese take on a Paul Flynn recipe which I made to go with a lamb dish tomorrow night but sure we couldn’t resist a taste.

The last time I made Crispy Chilli Beef I used very expensive fillet steak. This time I used Bavette of Beef from Dunnes of Donnybrook who were recently awarded the Star Shop of the Year by the Associated Craft Butchers of Ireland. It was Pat Whelan who introduced me to this cut at the Butchery Demo earlier this week. Fintan Dunne tells me it is very popular with his Chinese customers because the cut does not ooze blood and juices. It comes from the flank or belly muscle of the cow and is full of flavour. it is a relatively long and flat cut which makes it ideal for thin slicing across the grain. It was such a cheap cut that I was afraid it would be tough without marinating. In fact it was absolutely delicious – a different texture entirely to fillet or sirloin it worked perfectly in its crispy coating. Sirloin or rump steak can be used as a substitute.
The sweet cucumber pickle was a better foil for the spiciness of this dish than Shan’s Bashed Cucumber which works well as a side dish with some of her milder main courses.
Hunan Style Crispy Chilli Beef – Xiang Wei Cui Niu Rou – 湘味脆牛肉

Every now and again I am about to write a blog post about one aspect of Chinese cooking and I get diverted by another idea. This is one such occasion.

Since we returned from China in early July, Chinese takeaways have been banned in our house but there’s one particular dish I’ve had a hankering for recently. When I used to give in and order takeaway, crispy chilli beef was alway a favourite, because of it’s rich, tangy flavour, but no sooner would I have eaten it than I would regret it as the heavy batter settled on my stomach and my wheat intolerance kicked in. Recently I’ve being thinking of ways to give this takeaway staple a lighter, Shananigans makeover and, after several half-successful attempts, I finally got it right a few nights ago.
I’m not sure of the origins of this dish – I suspect it’s not pure Sichuan or Hunan but a European adapatation. While this may not be as healthy as some of the dishes I cook, I would be confident that it’s a lot lower in fat and carbohydrate content than some of its takeout counterparts and it certainly passes the taste test, with no added MSG or gloopy sauces.
I love shopping in neighbourhood shops and, on weekdays, when I am commuting in and out of the city centre of Dublin, Donnybrook is a perfect staging point on my bus journey home. Dunnes of Donnybrook, recently awarded Star Shop of the Year by the Associated Craft Butchers of Ireland, and Roy Fox Gourmet Food can provide, between them, all the meat, vegetables and condiments I need. Roy Fox is particularly good on stocks of Asian spices, sauces and noodles and carries many of the items I usually have to seek out in an Asian Market – a boon for those daunted by the overwhelming range of stock in those markets.

Credit where due at Dunnes of Donnybrook

So on the way home from town I picked up a few excellent fillet steaks from Fintan Dunne and my vegetables from Roy Fox. This is what I did with them:
Shananigans Crispy Chilli Beef – Xiang ciu niu rou pian – 香脆牛肉片
Serves 3 – 4
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