Might as well start this off with my most famous recipe – as seen in The Guardian! I’ve updated the recipe a little since then, as you’ll see, to boost the flavour a bit.
Ingredients
Serves 2 to 4
- 1 to 3 birds eye chillies (depending on taste)
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 small (approx 1cm) piece of ginger
- 1 red onion
- 3 medium-sized beef steaks (trimmed of fat)
- 2tbsp dark soy sauce
- 2tbsp honey
- A splash of sweet wine (e.g. saké or sherry)
Method
- Put the steaks a mixing bowl with the soy sauce, honey, wine and some ground pepper and turn until well covered. Leave to marinade for a while.
- Chop the chillies, ginger, garlic and onion finely, and heat in the wok until lightly browned
- Add the steaks to the wok and cook them thoroughly.
- Once cooked right through, remove the steaks (keeping the sauce) and chop them into long, thin strips.
- Serve on noodles, rice or stir-fried vegetables, with the sauce drizzled over the top.
I find this goes well with a fairly sweet vegetable stir-fry – carrots, onions, babycorn, beansprouts and so on. It can produce a lot of liquid, which you might want to pour away before serving. This recipe is hard to make vegetarian, although you could do it with mushrooms instead of beef, and Quorn or similar beef-style burgers do work as a source of ersatz steak. The wine is optional, but does complement the honey quite nicely.