Beef

By most accounts, this dish is of Cantonese origin. The key ingredients are sliced beef, onion, garlic, ginger, and bell peppers seasoned with soy sauce, oyster sauce, Worcestershire sauce, sesame oil, rice wine, sugar, and a generous amount of cracked black pepper. I took a cue from Bee Yin Low's version in her cookbook Easy Chinese Recipes  and added some Maggi Sauce to the marinade. Delicious served over steamed white rice!

Soy-braised five-spice beef shank with sesame oil is a traditional cold appetizer that's often served at Chinese banquets. It's also great with rice, scallion pancakes (I like this combo for breakfast), in noodles, or as is. Prepared five-spice beef is available sliced, packaged and ready to eat in many Chinese Markets, e.g., 99 Ranch Market, but since there are few to none in my hood, I decided it was high time to make my own.

This is a traditional Chinese-style beef stew that's super easy to make and tastes great, especially over steamed white rice. Daikon radish is a typical component, but turnips are a perfectly acceptable substitute (less pungent/bitter-spicy than the daikon). My non-traditional additions are the tomatoes and onion - both I think add an extra touch of sweetness and depth of flavor to this dish.

Some years ago, I had been on a vintage (i.e., used) cookbook buying spree on Amazon, particularly of Chinese cookbooks from circa the 1970s. I adapted this recipe for Cantonese-style curry beef with tomatoes from one of those cookbooks,  Chinese Village Cookbook: A Practical Guide to Cantonese Country Cooking  by Rhoda Yee, published in 1975. Gil told me that when he was a kid in Singapore this was a common dish, sometimes even served with scrambled eggs or noodles. This sau

I first came across this recipe in Fu Pei Mei's 1974  Chinese Cook Book Volume II, which I brought with me when I moved to Southern California from Taiwan to attend UC Irvine back in 1983. I was only 18 at the time and a less than seasoned cook, to put it kindly. I've tried many of her recipes since then, but not this one until just recently. I'm not sure about the origin of this dish, but how can you go wrong with steak and eggs, eh?