Spicy Beef Stir Fry

Meat. It is something that I have gone back and forth about for ages and actually have a few funny hang ups with. For instance, I don’t like to touch it raw–red meat, chicken, fish–it all makes my skin crawl which makes cooking raw meat, well, difficult. Funny, I know! Then there’s the quintessential issues: the cost of really good meat and where it comes from. A nice cut from your local butcher or fillet from the fresh fish vendor can add up if eaten several times a week. And with all the crazy information you hear about how the animals are treated, or abused, before they become our food makes me less inclined to eat it. The extra hormones pumped in cows and being force fed corn (who would naturally eat grass–if you ever drive up Interstate 5 in California and pass by Sacramento, you might think twice about putting those animals in your body too), the genetically modified chickens to make their breasts huge to the point they can’t walk anymore, and all the mercury and over fishing done in the coastal/river waters does give me pause. A lot of pause.

However, living with someone who’s metabolism is faster than the road-runner and is able to put away a lot of food while still keeping his girlish-figure, brings me out of pause and into action. Protein is a hot topic in our house–who needs it, who doesn’t, how much, and how often are the usual direction those conversations take. Because of where we live, I think we are really lucky with all the access we have to fresh, grass fed, farm grown by the-farmer-who-knows-your-name, meat. More often than not, people around here have a whole extra freezer just for the entire cow, pig, or sheep they bought to last them through the year! But that’s hard core. When we do buy meat, especially from our local grocer, we know that it didn’t come from Sacramento area, it wasn’t pumped full of hormones, and it ate grass. Which makes me happy.

So we got ourselves some nice flank steak and seared it up into an amazing spicy beef stir fry. I loosely based it on a Jamie Oliver recipe, but found myself substituting for a lot of things that we didn’t have hanging around, and it worked out perfectly. The cherry tomatoes were a really great addition, as were the snow peas and fresh spinach leaves. The sauce was based with the tang of ume plum vinegar, some soy sauce, red chili paste, sesame oil, a touch of toasted sesame oil, and a touch of honey–incredible. All of those flavors sauteed with a red onion until it was nearly caramelized so it melted in your mouth, paired perfectly with the slight chewiness of the beef strips.

This meal satisfied both of our food needs, which is a focus we’ve been having lately. I was happy with knowing that the meat was fresh and from a farm, and Andrew was happy with eating it. And I must admit, I was too. Cheers!

Spicy Beef Stir Fry, recipe adopted from Jamie Oliver

Light soy sauce
1 clove of garlic
¾in/2cm piece fresh ginger
1 fresh red chilli or red chili paste
1 small carrot, or two handfuls of snow peas, or a cup and a half of cherry tomatoes (or all of the above)
1 small red onion
Three large handfuls of fresh spinach
Small bunch of fresh cilantro
7oz/200g beef flank steaks–this is nice and thin, then you cut it into thin strips
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
2-3 teaspoons ume plum vinegar
2 tsp runny honey
Sesame oil

Peel and slice the garlic. Peel the ginger and chop into matchsticks.
Deseed and finely chop the chilli. Peel and finely slice the carrot, cut off stems of the snow peas, and thinly slice the red onion.

Heat a wok up nice and hot on the stove, add your olive oil. When it starts to shimmer, add the garlic and the red onion, turn the stove to medium high. Sautee for 2-3 minutes. Add the vinegar, chili/chili paste, a splash of sesame oil, more vinegar (as it evaporates), the ginger, and the soy sauce to taste. Add your thinly sliced beef strips and cook, adding a little more soy sauce or vinegar to taste as it cooks. When it is done, put in a plate on the side.

Add a little more olive oil and sesame oil to your same wok and then add the veggies–carrots, snow peas, tomatoes. Saute with a little more vinegar, soy sauce, chili paste. When the tomatoes look like they are going to pop, add the spinach, cook for just about a minute, then re-add the steak. Turn off the heat, toss well together and serve over rice. Enjoy!