Saturday, March 13, 2010

beef and scallion stir-fry

Last night we had the Beef and Scallion Stir-fry. It starts out with slices of beef fried in oil on high. This made me nervous and with good reason. I had some major splash back even though I patted the meat dry. The entire stove top is a oil speckled mess! Once I got over that hurdle the rest of the meal came together super fast. Almost too fast, you don't have time to do anything but throw your prepped ingredients in minute to minute or you may burn the garlic, over cook the scallions and risk drying out the sauce. But I luckily avoided that by reading this recipe ahead (which I admit, I don't always do).

The best ingredient in this recipe is hoisin sauce. I've made many Asian flavoured dishes with hoisin, such as moo shu pork, and it's a great way to add a ton of flavour with no effort. I've even used it as a sauce on wraps, it's the HP brown sauce of the East! The recipe also call for red pepper flakes. I ended up adding twice the amount the recipe called for because it's a wonderful dish to have red pepper flakes stand out. Oh, I also added quite a bit more salt than the recipe called for. Sorry Martha, your Everyday Food recipes aren't always seasoned enough.

Consensus: it was good but not great. At least I've managed to put one beef recipe behind me.

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