Tag Archives: beef

Recipe: Star Wars Themed Main Dish Inspired by Qui-Gon Jinn

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May the Fourth Be With You

So for the Star Wars themed Chef’s Table I was originally tasked with a side dish inspired by Qui-Gon Jinn. As thus my original idea was have
– quinoa soaked and cooked in a gin / water mix
– strips of veal marinated in gin then seared

And that was it, nothing terribly fancy, just something sweet and short because when I think of Qui-Gon Jinn what comes to mind are:
– his connection with the “Living Force” meaning he was very much “in the moment”
– his calming presence for Anakin Skywalker

As thus my desire to use ingredients that would help people “de-stress” and as thus provide that “calming” effect that Qui-Gon Jinn had on young Anakin.

However when another member dropped out and with it the meat / pork course I decided to take that over as well and turned my side dish into the main dish and added more stuff. So what did I end up doing?

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Recipe: Corned Beef Hash… on Rice

While grocery shopping a few weeks ago, I came across a bit of corned beef and decided to purchase it on a whim. Coming from an Asian family, corned beef isn’t exactly a common meat in the household, though we all have had a bit of a corned beef as a deli meat and as sandwiches.

So why did I decide to get a slab of corned beef? Who knows… and it took well over a week before I figured out what to do with it… Corned Beef Hash!

Well duh, why didn’t I think of this before? The recipe would be similar to that of the Vietnamese dish: Bo Luc Lac aka Vietnamese Shaking Beef. Over at RasaMalaysia the Ravenous Couple were asked to write a guest post blog about the dish as well as their recipe:

INGREDIENTS:
Beef Marinade
1.5 lbs beef sirloin (or any cut you like) cut into 1″ cubes
2 tbs minced garlic
1.5 tbs sugar
2 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs sesame oil
1 ts thick soy sauce

Vinaigrette
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1.5 tbs sugar
1/2 tbs salt

Dipping Sauce
Juice of 1 lime
1/2 ts kosher salt
1/2 ts fresh cracked pepper

1 red onion, thinly sliced
2 bunches of watercress, long stems trimmed
2 tomatoes, thinly sliced

Cooking oil for frying

METHOD:
Prepare marinade by combining garlic, oyster sauce, sugar, fish sauce, thick soy sauce and sesame oil with the beef for at least half an hour, preferably 1-2 hrs.
Prepare vinaigrette by mixing rice vinegar with salt and sugar. It should be a balance of sour, salty and sweet.

Thinly slice the red onion and use about 3-4 tbs of the vinaigrette to pickle and set aside covered in fridge for about 10 minutes. Prepare bed of watercress and tomatoes in a serving platter and set aside.

Heat a large wok or pan over high heat. Add about 2 tbs cooking oil and when it begins to smoke, add an even layer of beef and allow to sear for about 2 minutes, before “shaking” to sear the opposite sides for about another 1-2 minute more to brown all the sides. Do this in batches to cook all the beef if necessary.

Transfer beef to bed of watercress and tomatoes. Drizzle another 3-4 tbs of vinaigrette over the beef and greens and top with pickled red onions. Lastly, squeeze lime juice over salt and pepper in a small ramekin.

Enjoy!

COOK’S NOTE:
We like our beef medium rare and test the meat by touch and sight–it will plump up slightly and be bouncy to the touch with a spatula.

Granted, at home we had a much more simplistic version of the above recipe, but this is very good nonetheless. But, instead of adapting the above recipe for the corned beef, I figured I would go with my original idea of making Corned Beef Hash to test for taste and texture before seeing if I could create an adaptation of the above with the Corned Beef.
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