this is not a journal title

This recipe comes from my Nga Boo (maternal grandmother), and I think it's the first thing I learned to cook. If you're vegetarian, you're out of luck.

Ingredients
* Oyster sauce - you can find this in the Asian section of many grocery stores, or else find an Asian grocery store
* Soy sauce
* Terriyaki sauce (optional)
* Corn starch
* cooking wine (optional)
* 1 yellow/white onion
* garlic (pre-minced, or else a couple cloves that you mince, optional)
* olive oil / sesame oil
* 0.7 - 1.0 lb beef - preferably flank steak (but it's hard to find and expensive when you do), second choice pre-cut stirfry beef, third choice get a decent cut of steak
* some veggie (Choice 1: bok choi, canned baby corn, and portabello mushroom; Choice 2: fresh string beans or frozen french-cut green beans; Nga Boo's Choice: asparagus)
* rice (I recommend 1-1.5 cups dry)

Marinate
The night before cooking this, marinate the meat. Cut into small pieces if you have the time, marinate whole if you do not. Put the meat into a tupperware and cover with soy sauce and sprinkle on corn starch - I'd say 2 tablespoons to a quarter cup of soy sauce, and up to 2 tablespoons of corn starch, but I generally eyeball it. You can add a tablespoon of a cooking wine now or later - not too much or it'll become a bit gelatin-y. Shake to distribute evenly.

This prep time is 15-30 minutes.

Cook
Rice takes the longest so I start that first, then chop the onion and garlic.

Saute onion over medium heat in a pan with the oil and the optional garlic until the union changes color to yellow (5-15 minutes?).

While onions are sauteeing, chop any fresh veggies and set aside. If using bok choi, I suggest separating the white stems from the green leaves, as they have different ideal cook times (cook the stems longer).

When onions are yellow, lower heat to medium-low and add beef. Also add a generous amount of oyster sauce (I think I do around 1/4 cup); optionally add more soy sauce, terriyaki, and cooking wine. Cover. Stir frequently. As it cooks, the sauce will first become more watery as the beef juices come out, and then thicken up a bit again as the moisture evaporates.

At/near sea level: Add the veggies when the meat has lost most of the pinkness, since they usually take less time. I suggest adding the veggies that take longer to cook sooner (e.g., bok choi stems, asparagus), and adding things that take shorter time to cook or come frozen or in a can later (e.g., mushrooms, canned baby corn, green bok choi leaves).

At high elevations: Add the veggies earlier than at sea level, while the meat is still mostly pink, as the lower temperature of the liquid means that they will take longer to cook than at sea level. Again, add in order of how long they take to cook.

Cooking/prep time: 1 hour. This serves 2-3 meals, depending on the size of your appetite. There will be LOTS of sauce, it's the best part.

Earlier this year, one of my Mom's cousins emailed us a crapload of family photos, mostly from the 1920's and 20's I think, that he'd scanned and color-corrected. I've finally uploaded them to Flickr and added some of my own commentary. In case you'd like to see a few samples and don't want to go there, here's some of my favorites.


If the flower in the girl's hair is is white, that means she lost a mother or father recently, according to blahblahboy's mother. Seeing as these are "family" photos, and no one else in the family there has a flower in their hair, I suspect the girl is a family servant. (Then again, would a servant have been in a family photo?)


Oh yeah, did I mention they were stinkin' rich? That's real fur.


There's so much character revealed in their faces, and more yet hidden.


I actually know everyone in this photo. It's Atlantic City, 1960's.


Nga Boo on the left. I wear that jacket in the summer now. The same jacket, not a repro. I'm guessing 1970's-80's?