Beef Dishes

• Spicy Green Bean and Beef Stir Fry
• Looed Beef
• Fillet Mignon with Proscuitto

Spicy Green Bean and Beef Stir Fry (serves 1)

• 2 Tbs oil
• 1/2 small onion, chopped
• 2 red peppers (not the bell ones), seeded and chopped
• 1 large clove garlic, minced
• about 2 c. green beans, washed and trimmed
• 1/2 c. white wine
• about 1/2 c. chopped cooked steak or other beef
• 4 Tbs roasted red pepper sauce (See note below)
• 2 Tbs chicken broth

1. Heat the oil in a wok over high heat, then stir fry the onion until wilted, about 2 minutes. Lower heat to medium-high and add the peppers and garlic. Stir fry for another minute, then add the green beans. Cook for another minute, then add the wine, cover and cook for 2 minutes.
2. Add the meat, pepper sauce and broth, stir to mix and let simmer for a moment until heated through.

Looed Beef

I've used this method for beef, pork and chicken and all have turned out wonderfully! The cookbook I read this in said fish is also nice, but you shouldn't re-use the sauce because the fish flavor left in the sauce is too strong.

I wanted to make looed beef, but I also wanted a hot dipping-style sauce, so I just cooked the beef, served it over rice with brocolli and drizzled some of the sauce over the top. The result was really tasty and fairly firey -- but with a wonderful flavor from the peppers. Taste, not just heat. What a concept!

One of my favorite beverage and food pairings is dark German bock beer and foods heavy in soy sauce flavoring. Somehow the sweet, malty flavor of the beer seems to play incredibly well off the soy sauce. Another benefit is that beer is very palate friendly when the food is somewhat hotter.

My adaptation of all this is probably far from authentic, but it's tasty.

Master Sauce for Looing

• 1 c. soy sauce
• 1 c. chicken broth
• 1/2 c. dry sherry
• 1 large clove garlic, pressed
• 2 large ginger "coin" slices
• 1 star anise
• 1 green onion, sliced into 1" pieces

• 1 c. soy sauce
• 1/2 c. sherry
• 1 Tbs pulverized golden rock sugar
• 3 small hot peppers, seeded, deveined and minced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp minced ginger

After the sauce is cooled, strain it into a bottle and keep in the refrigerator until the next use. Add more broth, soy sauce and sherry as needed. Drop in more garlic, ginger and onion each time you use it.

For the dipping sauce, mix all ingredients together in a saucepan, bring to a boil and then simmer, uncovered for 10 minutes. Drizzle over foods or dunk the foods straight into the sauce.

Fillet Mignon with Proscuitto

Our menu for the evening was tossed together Saturday during various visits to stores. We found a pair of great fillet mignon steaks on sale for $7.80/lb and a trip through the veggie section of another store netted us Florida sweet corn at $0.60/ear. We knew the steaks would go great with a bottle of one of our favorite merlots: Waterbrook. A batch of rolls and a nice green salad rounded off the dinner.

While the broiler was preheating I melted a bit of butter, pressed in a couple cloves of garlic, poured in a bit of Merlot, and gave the sauce a couple twists of pepper. I took the steaks and wrapped them in a bit of procuitto, then plopped 'em in a broiling pan. A couple spoonfuls of sauce got slathered over the steaks, and under the broiler they went. The steaks got cooked for about seven minutes per side, with more sauce added occasionally. The procuitto got a bit charred, but was a great addition to the wonderful steaks.