Beef with onions in oyster sauce

Asian cuisine is inexhaustible, like the treasures of Golconde. Indian cuisines, Chinese cuisines, Thai cuisine, to name but a few, but also Vietnamese, Japanese, Indonesian, are enough to keep a cook busy for three lives. They are refined, fragrant, subtle, delicate and powerful cuisines. And what a wonderful tour operator! These recipes take you thousands of kilometres, discovering countries, regions, rivers, mountains, coasts, scents and legends, all in your kitchen and at your table.

However, the recipes offered in Asian cookbooks often have a few flaws. First the ingredients mentioned. They are sometimes difficult to find if you live far from an Asian grocery store. Secondly, the proposed cooking methods are sometimes too hasty. They don't get everything the ingredients can offer. To remedy this, I propose when possible ingredients that are equivalent to Asian ingredients, but easy to find in the West. And I suggest cooking methods that magnify the ingredients rather than restrict them.

Here is an example of this. To make this onion beef with oyster sauce, Thai recipe, I start by roasting a roast beef. It's my paw. Follow me step by step!

Pour 4 personnes

Ingredients

• A 500 g roast beef without bard
• 3 yellow onions
• 400g green asparagus (or frozen green beans out of season)
• 1 tablespoon coarse salt
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 fresh red chilli pepper
• 1 dried bird chilli pepper
• 2 tablespoons of oyster sauce
• 1 tablespoon of salted soy sauce
• 6cl of water (6 tablespoons)

In the off-season for asparagus, you can choose frozen green beans. Some brands freeze them almost at the exit of the field. They retain their taste, nutritional qualities, and colour. In addition, they are already ready to cook. You can also not add anything. In the latter case, choose a fresh green chilli pepper, for the harmony of the dish's colours.

Equipment

A wok or a large sauté pan

An oven dish

A stewpot or a high saucepan

A salad bowl filled with cold water and ice cubes (for the asparagus)

A skimmer

A colander

A cooking brush

A kitchen tongs

A dinner plate

A soup plate

A strainer

A bowl

A wooden spoon

Skill

I raise the skill level of the recipe to three knives, because it requires several different operations to achieve the best possible result. However, none of these manipulations require any particular technical skill.

Time frame

1h30

Price per person

7,5 €

Recipe

Start with the beef.

Most books will require you to slice 500g of raw rump steak into strips, and then cook them directly in the wok. It's a heresy!!! All the blood escapes, so all the cooking juice that gives the taste and mellow. By the time the slices are cooked, although quickly, the meat will have lost all its taste and will harden immediately. The result is inevitable: you will chew small pieces of sole. Instead, I show you how to get tender and juicy bites. Just follow my recipe for the perfect roast beef, adapting the cooking time exactly to the weight of the meat. Let me guide you again.

Remove the roast beef from the refrigerator one hour before cooking.

Preheat the oven to 240° (it takes at least 10 minutes).

Coat the beef with 1 teaspoon of olive oil with a kitchen brush. If you do not have a brush, spread the oil with your fingers. Don't salt the meat yet! Put your roast beef in the dish and put it in the oven for 6 minutes at 240°.

After 6 minutes, take the dish out of the oven. Leave the oven at 240°. Salt the meat lightly, pepper it generously, on all sides. Turn it over in the dish. Do not use a fork, do not prick the meat: the juice would leak through these holes. To turn the piece over, use a kitchen tongs.

Remettez le plat au four à 240° pendant 6 minutes. Puis sortez le plat, tournez encore la viande d’un quart de tour et enfournez à nouveau pour 6 minutes. Soit 18 minutes au total.

Put the dish back in the oven at 240° for 6 minutes. Then take out the dish, turn the meat a quarter turn again and oven again for 6 minutes. That is 18 minutes in total.

When the cooking is finished, place the roast beef on the bottom of a soup plate turned upside down in a flat plate. Let the meat rest for 15 minutes, turning it every 5 minutes. This will circulate the juice inside the fibers.

Meanwhile, prepare the accompanying juice. Pour 6cl of water (six tablespoons) into the hot cooking dish. Carefully scrape off the sticky juices at the bottom with a wooden spatula to mix them with water. You will get a beautiful dark juice. Put the dish in the oven turned off during the resting time of the meat. When the resting time of the meat is over, pour the juice into a bowl through a strainer. Add the blood that has flowed in the meat's resting plate. Stir and add a very small pinch of salt and a turn of the pepper mill. Put that bowl aside.

While the beef is in the oven, you can take care of the asparagus. Again, most cookbooks suggest that you cut them raw into pieces and put them in the wok at the same time as the rest. The only thing is that meat, onions and asparagus are not prepared at the same temperature or during the same cooking time. In this case, your asparagus would be almost raw and tasteless. Instead, follow my recipe for cooking asparagus. I remind you of it below.

Align the asparagus by the tip on the board and cut the lower third of the stem to the same height to eliminate the lower fibrous part that cannot be eaten.

Fill with water a stew pot or large pan with high sides. To measure the correct height of water, place an asparagus standing in the pot. The water must reach a little below the tip. Pour a tablespoon of coarse salt into the water and bring to a boil.

Meanwhile, tie the asparagus bunch together. A turn in the upper third, a turn in the lower third, not too tight but in such a way that the bunch can stand upright on its own.

When the water boils, put the bunche upright in boiling water. Place it against the edges so that it remains vertical. Keep the water boiling slowly during 10 minutes.

At the end of this time, flip the bunche horizontally in the water. Leave in small bubbles for 5 minutes. The tips of asparagus are more fragile than the stems, and their taste more delicate. This cooking method preserves the taste and texture of each part of the asparagus.

While the tips are cooking, prepare a salad bowl full of cold water in which you pour an ice cube tray. When the asparagus are cooked, remove the bunch with a skimmer and plunge it into the ice-cold water. This will stop the cooking and keep their beautiful green color. Otherwise they will tarnish. Cut the strings and leave them for a minute before transferring them with the skimmer into the colander to allow them to drain.

If you use green beans in the recipe, simply fry them in a frying pan over high heat in a tablespoon of olive oil until they are tender, about 6 minutes. A little more if you want them even more tender: cook them to your taste.

The meat is now rested. 15 minutes minimum. But you can let it rest longer if you want, until the asparagus are cooked. Cut the beef into thick strips, which form bites that are easy to catch with chopsticks. Cut the asparagus into 5cm sections. Chop the onions. Chop the dried chilli pepper with a knife. Finely chop the garlic cloves. Cut the chilli pepper: roll it in your hands so that the seeds come off inside, cut it into small slices at an angle, and remove all the pips and white flesh with a small knife.

Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in the wok over medium heat. When the wok is hot, pour the onions into it. Brown them for 5 minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon.

Add the fresh chilli pepper and stir for 3 minutes. Then put the beef, asparagus, bird pepper, garlic, oyster sauce, soya, meat juice, go up over high heat and stir constantly to mix and reheat for 5 minutes.

It's ready to go. Serve with a simple Thai white rice.