12 Jul - Home Food - Beef & Black Bean with Chinese Cabbage

* I have decided to sometimes blog about food that I've made at home, otherwise there's not going to be many entries over the next few months.. It will be a good thing for me so I can keep track of what dishes I make too often / not enough etc.

First up is Beef with Black Bean and Chinese Cabbage (with rice of course). The greens were fried with garlic and haa mai, some chicken stock powder, black pepper and some cornstarch to thicken.

The cut of beef is oyster blade. Quite cheap (IGA had it for $12.99/kg) and I liked the look of it cos it had decent marbling, a nice bit of fat along the edge (like rump) and some cartilage running through the middle. This was marinated overnight with a load of garlic (5 or 6 cloves I think), black bean sauce (which has more garlic), dark soy, rice wine, sesame oil, black pepper and cornstarch. Onions were first fried off, then beef was added and stir fried till done. Mum's ground chilli was added at the end.

I quite like oyster blade. The meat was still quite tender, and the slight chew from the fat and cartilage is making my mouth water as I type this up haha. What would've made this really really good would've been some wok hei, the smokey breath of the wok caused by oodles of uber high heat. Using the wok burner that I left at my folks place would've worked, however my BBQ side burner, while hotter than the indoor burner, probably doesn't flow enough gas.

I also broke my wok chan (spatula). Must buy a better quality one than K-Mart crap...