Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Wok Hard!

Good morning friends and neighbors.

Nice to be back. I trust everyone is having a good start to summer.

If you can call this summer…

It’s been fine I guess. Got a pretty big event coming up this Wednesday though.

Ready?

Eldest granddaughter is graduating from high school.

Yes. That officially makes me…old as shit. I told her not to be in a hurry to make me a GREAT granddaddy. She’ll be fine. She’s seriously focused on her college goals and she’s a fantastic student who actually seems fairly, well, normal.

I KNOW!

I’m really very, very fortunate. I’ve got two beautiful, wonderful daughters and they are raising my three equally beautiful, bright and wonderful granddaughters.

I had no idea I had that in me when I got into the Dad game.

Anyway.

Today Sunday Gravy is going back to Chinese cuisine. That’s mainly because I know I’ve got all of the oils, sauces and spices to make that shit happen proper…

and I’m seriously getting hooked on how delicious, fresh and easy this cuisine is to make at home. Grab some protein and fresh veggies and get the fuck after it. Once you have all of the needed supplies it’s also cheap as fuck to make. Bonus!

I originally wanted to make beef chow fun – because it’s fucking awesome – and some of the best I ever had was from the Grand Palace Seafood Restaurant in South San Francisco. I had the good fortune to eat there several times. I was working at Genentech in “South City” a few years back and was based out of there for about a month. This restaurant was walking distance from my hotel room.

I shit you negative, their beef chow fun with XO sauce was one of the most delicious goddamn things I’ve ever eaten. I mean EVER fucking ever eaten and I wanted to try to duplicate it…

Alas the proper noodles were not to be had.

Chow fun needs fresh, wide, fat rice noodles and they were simply not available at the places I checked and visited. I briefly contemplated making fresh rice noodles but after reading a few recipes, I’ll probably fuck around with those later when I can give it a few attempts.

The store did have the Thai Linguine noodles however. We’ll use them instead.

I also wanted to introduce you to XO sauce that was discussed in the intro. 

According to the WIKIs…

“XO sauce is a spicy seafood sauce from Hong Kong with an umami flavour. It is commonly used in southern Chinese regions such as Guangdong.

History: Developed in the 1980s in Hong Kong for Cantonese cuisine, XO sauce is made of roughly-chopped dried seafood, including dried scallops (conpoy), fish, and shrimp, which are cooked with chili peppers, onions, and garlic. This dried seafood-based sauce resembles the Fujianese shacha sauce. Spring Moon, the Chinese restaurant of the Peninsula Hong Kong hotel, is often credited with the invention of XO sauce, although some claim it came from other nearby restaurants in the Tsim Sha Tsui area of Kowloon.”

Now people? If you want the funk? If you need the funk? This shit BRINGS the funk. I fucking love this stuff.

Our next ingredient for todays meal requires no additional re-introduction.

Ralph’s had these bad motherfuckers on sale for $7.99 a pound. You can bet your ass I bought two of them.

Something we’ve learned from Chinese cuisine is you don’t need this entire goddamn ribeye. Just enough for a wok-full along with the other ingredients.

Remember: the beef is simply a component of the entire meal and not a main ingredient.

Fuck it let’s get going.

Today’s recipe is greatly inspired by thewoksoflife.com again.

We begin by making a real quick and easy marinade for the beef.

1/4 teaspoon baking soda 

1 teaspoon cornstarch

1 teaspoon light soy sauce

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

Mix the ingredients together, add the beef and let it marinate for about an hour. Any longer and you run the risk of the beef disintegrating when it hits the skillet.

Next we’ll need a quick soak of the noodles in hot water. Let this sit for about 30 minutes or so.

Next you mince up the usual suspects of ginger and garlic. About half a tablespoon of each.

All this shit we’re doing here is prep work. You can do all of this while the steak is marinating.

Let’s make the sauce next.

Grab a bowl and add in about 1 tablespoon of our XO sauce.

Next we add:

1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine*

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

2 teaspoons dark soy sauce*

2 tablespoons regular soy sauce

1/8 teaspoon sugar – I used brown sugar for this.

* remember when we made the san bei ji and used these ingredients? That’s how this recipe came into my brain because it uses a similar profile as that dish and I had these ingredients still on hand!

Combine those ingredients with the XO sauce and give a good stir.

When the beef has finished its relaxing marinade bath it’s time to get fucking busy.

Still, this will be super easy to finish because we did all of that initial prep work ahead of time. The dish comes together really fast after that.

Get some vegetable oil heated up over a high heat. Or do like I did and use half sesame oil and half vegetable oil. A scant tablespoon of each will suffice. Since I don’t have an actual wok I use my biggest, deepest skillet in its place.

Time to sear the beef. This shit will go fast, fast, fast from here. 

This just needs a couple of quick tosses and a minute or two per side.

Oh hell yes. Don’t be getting all skittish and shit. We’ll still finish cooking the beef in the final cooking session.

Remove the meat and get the ginger and garlic a quick toss. Oh shit yes I left the beef juices in there.

With the heat running this hot you have to be really careful so the ginger and garlic don’t burn. Less than 20 seconds should do the trick.

Next the soaked and drained noodles jump in the conga line.

Use chopsticks to coat these well or just toss the shit out of the pan a few times. Again just a couple of minutes. You can also give a gentle pour of another tablespoon of shaoxing wine at this point. Just drizzle some along the edge of the noodles.

Get the steak back in there.

Give your wrist flicking technique a try here, just don’t be flinging shit all over the kitchen. Better yet? Just use some tongs or chop sticks.

Now add in the sauce we prepped earlier with the sesame oil, the 2 soy sauces, brown sugar etc. Stir stir. Combine combine.

Then some scallions get in the pool. This was about 3-4 scallions cut into inch or so long pieces. Cut the fatter white ends of the green onion in half so they cook through.

See how our sauce is deepening the color?

Final ingredient time!

First a quick health and safety disclaimer. Wash this shit. Wash it good. We found the mung bean sprouts at the Filipino market we frequent because you can’t always find this shit at your basic grocery stores anymore. Guess a few years back there was a serious e-coli outbreak and a lot of your bigger grocery chains won’t even carry them because of the risk factor.

Just throwing that shit out there for you to keep in mind.

What are you waiting for? Get some of them bastards in the pan!

I used a handful. Maybe 2-3 ounces total. That’s a pretty sexy photo right there isn’t it. It’s got the color contrasts and shit.

Nice.

Finish cooking the dish by cooking the sprouts until tender. Two to three minutes will do the trick.

To the plates we go!

Hey! Check out that eggroll!

Is that… Homemade?

If needed splash a little soy sauce on the dish instead of salt.  You can use a sauce of choice on that eggroll too. Damn right I used Sriracha on that eggroll.

Friends? This shit is fantastic. The rich sauce, the chunks of ribeye. The bright fresh veggies. I mean FUCKING HELL! Salty, savory, rich, filling and funky. This is pure goodness.

This is the shit I’m talking about when I talk about the ease and the freshness and deliciousness when you have all of the right ingredients. You could serve this to fucking royalty if you wanted. Not that I would ever invite royalty to my home.

This is a keeper folks.

I highly recommend working on those old stir fry skills.

So there we are! Another delicious dish from the Sunday Gravy test kitchen.

I appreciate you good folks! Truly and I can’t wait to do this….

What?

The eggrolls?

What about them?

Yes, they were indeed homemade, why do you ask?

OH! You want to know more about them?

Turns out I didn’t make them, someone else did.

Word around the campfire is they may even stop by next week to show you how that shit gets done.

How does that sound?

Damn right. A two part episode!

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

Be well everyone and I’ll see you soon.

PEACE!