And The Real Winner Is: Sesame and chilli beef stir fry with broccoli and green pepper

Apologies for the self congratulatory title of this post, but it’s concerning the meal I made to accompany watching the England v Algeria game on the World Cup (soccer for you Americans).

The game itself was a terrible washout of a goalless draw… pretty much guaranteed to make a part time, fair weather football fan like me even more part time, and downright tropical climate requiring.

Anyhow, more importantly here’s what I did:

First I acquired a really nice bit of sirloin, weighing just over 1lb

Nice sirloin steak

I then trimmed off some of the fat and sliced the meat thinly against the grain:

Trimmed and sliced

I assembled my marinade ingredients:

Marinade: Soy sauce, blackbean sauce, chinese cooking wine, sesame oil, garlic

I then marinaded the beef for 1 hour in 2 tblsp’s soy sauce, 1 tblsp blackbean sauce, 2 tblsp’s chinese cooking wine, 1 tblsp sesame oil, 2 crushed and chopped cloves of garlic.

Beef in marinade

While the beef was marinading I assembled the rest of the ingredients for the stirfry: 1 tsp sesame seeds, a small head of brocolli, 3 spring onions, 1 green pepper, 2 large red chillies, 4 green birdseye chillies, 3 more cloves of garlic.

Ingredients for the stirfry

Chopped everything up suitably:

Chopped

Then heat some groundnut oil in a wok, and throw in the sesame seeds. Fry for about 10-20 secs until they start to colour…

Fry the sesame seeds

Add the spring onions and green chillies and fry for about 1 min

Add the spring onions and green chillies

Add the beef. Fry for a few mins until nicely coloured.

Add the beef

When the beef has coloured nicely, add a good teaspoon of brown sugar.

Add a teaspoon of brown sugar

After stirring the sugar in, add the broccoli, green pepper and red chilli…

Add broccoli, green pepper and red chilli

Stir fry for 5-8 mins until broccoli is nicely al dente, or cooked to taste..

Stir fry until broccoli is nicely al dente

While I was doing this, I also made some fried rice according to a method given to me by friend and colleague Kevan Frost.
To make the rice, first boil your rice till done and drain. Set aside.
Then, when ready, heat some groundnut oil in another wok. When hot put one egg into the pan and scramble round with a wooden spoon. Then add the rice, fry for a few mins, add chopped spring onion, sweetcorn, and peas (which I had steamed previously). I also gave it a splash of soy sauce as well.
Finally, stir in a good tblsp of sesame oil.

Fried rice and stirfry

Serve out immediately with a glass of cold beer. Then watch a rubbish football match……

Serve out and watch bad football