This grew to be one of my favourite dishes when I lived in Beijing. We ate it very often for lunch. Maybe even once or twice a week. Back in the Netherlands I was really missing this dish. As far as I know, there is no sichuan restaurant here. Chinese restaurants are mainly oriented on the cantonese cuisine. And besides that, they have adapted so much to the average taste, you can hardly recognize it to be chinese. So when I got my hands on “The Land of Plenty” by Fuchsia Dunlop I was thrilled to recognize so many dishes. I’ve adapted Fuchsia’s recipe a little bit by using the Sichuan Chili Oil I prepared earlier, which turns this into a quick and easy recipe.
RECIPE
450 gram lean beef
¼ t salt
1 T shaoxing ricewine
Cut the beef against the grain into thin slices about 2 x 4 cm.
Add salt and shaoxing wine and set aside to marinate while you prepare the rest.
Make a mixture of
4 T potatoflour and
4 T cold water
(or 6 T cornstarch with 6 T water)
and set aside
3 T peanutoil
3 T chili bean sauce (toban jiang)
950 ml chickenstock
2 t dark soysauce
Heat the 3T peanut oil until it will just begin to smoke.
Turn heat to medium and add the 3T chili bean sauce (toban jiang).
Stirfry for about 30 seconds, until the oil is red and fragrant.
Then add 950 ml chickenstock and 2t dark soysauce.
Bring to the boil. Now this is the base for the beef to boil in.
But stirfry the vegetable first.
4 T Sichuan Chili Oil
4 spring onions (julienne) (so in the picture I did it wrong)
1 chinese cabbage or iceberg lettuce (in stripes)
Stirfry the spring onions and cabbage quickly for about 1 minute in 4 T sichuanpepperoil.
Transfer to a bowl or bowls.
Take the marinated beef.
Add the potatoflour (or cornstarch) mixture and stir well in one direction to coat all the pieces of beef.
Make sure the sauce is boiling vigorously when you drop in the beef. Wait for the sauce to return to the boil and then use a pair of chopsticks to gently separate the slices. Simmer for a minute or so, until the beef is juist cooked and then spoon it onto the waiting vegetables. Pour over the sauce.
Sprinkle some roasted sichuanpeppercorns and additional spring onion over the dish and carefully pour over another 3 T of smoking sizzling hot oil. (I skipped this the other day)
Although Fuchsia doesn’t mention anything about it, I don’t think you are supposed to eat the sauce. It’s too greasy.
I developed my own way of eating it. I would take some rice with my chinese spoon, then with my chopsticks fish some lettuce from the bottom of the bowl, add a piece of beef and at least 1 sichuanpeppercorn. After a while some of my chinese colleagues copied this. Maybe they still eat it like this. :-)
Tips
- I like to use the frozen beef for this dish. Not just because it’s cheaper, but also because it’s easy to cut if it’s still a little bit frozen.
- Fuchsia’s recipe asks for flank steak. (Bavette in French or Bavette ‘d aloyau. I think. It’s not very common in the Netherlands, so I’m not sure)
- In my memory it was always made with iceberg lettuce. When you use that, be sure to really, realy quickly stirfry it. It should still have a little crunch. I used chinese cabbage, because I think that’s a more substantial vegetable than watery lettuce. So it makes a more balanced dinner.
- Don’t make the mistake I made (twice!) to just chop the spring onions instead of cutting them julienne. Otherwise it’s more complicate to eat. Julienne is much easier to pick up with your chopsticks.
- After adding the beef to the stock, really wait for it to come back to the boil and then carefully seperate the pieces with your chopstick. If you do it too soon, the soup will thicken from the cornstarch/potatoflour, as you can see on the first photo. The picture below is from my second attempt. It looks much better. (Tastewise it doesn’t make much difference though)
- Serve with white rice and Spicy Aubergine from Sichuan
About Robin
I love to cook. Check out my dutch website:
Aziatische-ingredienten.nl
Kok Robin 
About cutting against or with the grain. It’s not that complicated. Think of a muscle as a bundle of parallel wires (like in a cable or something). Cutting along the grain would be cutting in line with the wires, cutting against the grain would be cutting across the wires. As certain pieces of beef are coming from parts of the animal that did a lot of fitness exercises, the muscular strings (cables) are rather rigid esspecially in line with the grain. So if you would cut them along the grain people would be chewing until kingdom come. By cutting against the grain, so across the strings, pieces become weak and chewable. Voila!
Ah, you thought it would be more interesting to respond here on a question I asked on my flickr photolog? ;-)
Like I said, I do understand the whole principle behind it. It makes total sense what you write. However, when I have a piece of meat in my hands I can only guess how the grains are running. I can’t actually see it. Can you? I can see it on a loin, yes, but on these things our supermarkets call steaks? Really, I can’t.
But I figured, the other day, that it’s best to just assume that these steaks are cut against the grain, which means I should slice them “horizontally” first. As you can see in the photo.
This sounds good! I am really liking all of your sichuan dishes!
Ook weer erg smakelijk met die dikke rijke saus. Een aangezien ik het voor twee maakte en de hoeveelheden saus niet had verminderd bleef er nog veel over: maar een paar lepels over de rijst gegoten: niks mis mee. Hoewel ik soms wat moeite blijf hebben met de Sichuanpeper: misschien is het de kwaliteit, maar ik het vaak het idee dat ik op een sterkt smakende zandkorrel zit te kauwen, desondanks hou ik vol.
Maar hij smaakt wel sterk, je sichuanpepers? Lekker tongverlammend? Misschien kun je ze iets fijner malen? Of juist niet? Ik weet het eigenlijk niet, wat ik heb er zelf nooit zo’n last van, van een euh naar mondgevoel.
Wel leuk dat je zoveel geprobeerd hebt van mijn blog! En vooral, dat je het ook allemaal lekker vond.
Eum, de tofu vond ik minder…. :-) .
De Mapo Tofu? *mond zakt open*
Dat kan niet! *in shock*
Mja, ik vond het ook al vreemd gezien je aanbeveling. Ik vermoed ook dat het aan mij ligt, misschien dat ik de sichuanpepers te ‘ goed’ had aangebakken of wat fout gedaan had met de hoeveelheden. Ik heb verder niet zoveel tegen tofu of zo.
Als je op zich niks tegen tofu hebt, dan kan het niet zo zijn dat je Mapo niet lekker vindt! Nou ja, alles kan, maar ik kan het me dus niet voorstellen. Zeker omdat je zoveel andere sichuangerechten wel lekker vindt.
Here in Boston we are fortunate to have a number of Sichuan restaurants nearby, as well as full-on Asian supermarkets. Nonetheless… we just had to try our hands at making the chili oil. Results – success! Of course we just had to use it right away, so we made the Sichuan Braised Beef, cold tongue appetizer (we tried to get the ingredients for ox meat and tripe, but missed it at the butcher’s), and a popcorn with caramel and chili oil. Delish all around! I didn’t find it as oily as it seems like you did, though – which is great, but definitely something to watch out for. Also – around here a couple of the restaurants substitute something – I don’t know what – for the chili bean paste, which tastes vaguely of tomato to me (even though I know it doesn’t have it). More research is necessary, definitely.
I know that I’m a year or two (or three) behind your original post, but I just wanted to share out gratitude. Oh – come to Boston!
Wow! You made the lot! Great!
This dish was oily in China, not when I make it myself.
Here’s an example of how oily it can be:
I think it’s great you’ve come to share your gratitude. Thank you so much!
Do you like/prefer their substitute for chili beanpaste? I’m curious to know if you find out what it is.