'A mashup between a Western steak and a Chinese stir-fry"
Marc Matsumoto/No Recipes
In an attempt to tick off my 'new' dish for the week, last night I made this Black pepper beef, asparagus and celery stir fry for dinner from a recipe that caught my eye in the current Coles Magazine. Mine didn't look quite as dark and glossy as the above, but it wasn't far off. It wasn't as dark, because I just couldn't get my beef strips to turn over and brown on both sides. Well that's my excuse anyway. I don't have as much time for a post as usual today, so thought I would do a quickie on this variation of a classic Chinese dish. Well maybe a Chinese/American dish.
First though a quick word about the lady who devised the above recipe - Emma Knowles. Her name crops up frequently in the tiny print at the edge of the section she has contributed to, in the Coles Magazine. And her recipes are always interesting, so I thought I would see if I could find out more. Well this is she, when she was working as Gourmet Traveller's Food and Style Director - she may still be - but this was 2017. She has also contributed recipes to delicious. but so far no book. But then, with her husband Ed Devine she also runs a restaurant - Ruby's Diner in the Sydney suburb of Waverley. It's been running for over ten years, and for all I know it is now in different hands - this I could not discover. But she was definitely doing it whilst at Gourmet Traveller. Maybe it's mostly her husband's thing. Anyway - she is described as a food stylist and recipe creator. Modern careers.
Also an even quicker word about this lady - Nicky - author with her husband of the KItchen Sanctuary website. Why? Well this was one of those Google searches for a particular dish that brought up a whole host of 'amateur' websites, so I decided to do my occasional quick look at one of them. Since she was first on the list here she is. And in many ways, so typical of the thousands of websites, that promote their desire to help ordinary housewives create healthy, nutritious but delicious food at low cost and low effort. Homely stuff. And all power to them. She is British, but I have to say I initially thought she and her husband were American - I think it was all that homely stuff.
Anyway her Black pepper beef looks pretty good. There are lots of pictures of the process and the ingredients, plus a video too, not to mention links to other stir fry recipes on the site.
It was here, however, that I began to see that what we had for dinner last night was a variation on a Chinese takeaway classic. Well that's what lots of the authors said. What does that mean? Is it really Chinese, or a not quite Chinese dish.
Well it seems it's a bit of both. According to Wikipedia - and a few others - the dish seems to have originated in the Fujian province of China, but:
"In the original dish the meat used was pork and the seasonings were relatively light compared to pepper steak." Wikipedia
Then like so many dishes it was taken to the USA by migrants in the mid twentieth century - Wikipedia dates it's appearance in America to around 1948. So I guess what we have today is really Chinese/American.
The other thing I learnt from the Kitchen Sanctuary recipe was that the vegetables are usually onions and capsicum. The Coles version featured asparagus and celery, because it began their feature on spring greens - and I have to say that that combination was really lovely. As were Emma Knowles' other recipes in that section: Kale and fetta gozleme; Spring greens tart and Prawns, celery and tomato salad, with bloody mary dressing. I hope Emma Knowles gets paid well for her recipes, because there is no acknowledgement on their website of her work - just the tiny writing in the fold of the magazine.
But back to the Chinese black pepper beef. There is indeed quite a lot of pepper in the recipe. It's what makes it really, but not so much that it's really noticeable. It's more mellow than hot. Well David didn't really seem to notice that it had been a bit spicy until he had almost finished eating. And we both went for seconds. It was really good.
The other thing I noticed from those other recipes was that the sauce tended to feature oyster sauce which was not in ours, and did not feature sesame oil which was.
So I'll finish with a few examples of varying degrees of authenticity and all slightly different - but all featuring peppers, not asparagus and celery - which was, to my mind, a masterstroke. Black pepper beef from a Japanese chef Marc Matsumoto who calls his site No Recipes; Chinese black pepper beef - Marion's Kitchen which adds in baby corn; Beef stir fry with honey pepper sauce from Nagi Maehashi who adds honey to the sauce - nobody else does - on her website Recipe Tin Eats (her new book Tonight is out now); Chinese pepper steak - J. Kenji López-Alt/Serious Eats - I'm guessing a typical Chinese/American version and Pepper Steak from Bill the patriarch of The Woks of Life family.
I think the Japanese one looks the best of these. Although I'm still thinking the Coles variation is the best.
Cake for tomorrow's book group done - Ottolenghi's reliable Blueberry, almond and lemon cake. And now I must go and make a cauliflower cheese soup which I think will be an amalgam of those that combined the cauliflower and broccoli with a touch of the roasted cauliflower and garlic. A mishmash.
POSTSCRIPT
October 13
2023 - Apples from Winton
2022 - Serve with?
2018 - No cure for cramp
the black pepper stir fry was delicios. Tiny bit hot from the pepper, but great and colourfully green as in the phots. Lucky me