So, at the local overpriced grocery store the other day, this coyote came upon a screaming deal: 1.5kg local, organic, lean ground beef for $7.50. It was my lucky day! I picked up and brought it home, packaging it up and freezing it. I had a half pound portion, and decided to make this recipe by Kylie Kwong that I'd bookmarked when I got my copy of Simple Chinese Cooking.I present to you Mongolian Beef!
I made a half recipe, and instead of using cabbage I bought a package of coleslaw mix, which is one of my stir-frying allies. I love it!
Now, the cookbook recipe calls for shao hsing wine and I notice that the recipe on the web site has changed it to rice wine. I had neither. When I got the cookbook, I looked everywhere I could in this one horse district for shao hsing wine but to no avail. The cookbook says you can substitute the wine for dry sherry, but I am too cheap to do that, so I bought a bottle of cooking sherry from the local inexpensive but butt-ugly big box grocery store. I have no idea how the flavours compare, but we do what we can, right?
The verdict: great recipe! Simple, as you might expect. I didn't do the step of combining the cabbage with the salt because I was lazy, and perhaps I'd have had a more complexly flavoured dish, but still, I wasn't disappointed. Thank you, Kylie!
