Beef stir fry with ginger & garlic marinade

Stir-fried beef and vegetables is another way to use the basic ginger and garlic marinade.

Because the beef is shredded finely, you can use relatively tough cuts of meat that would normally require longer cooking and so keep the cost down. As a little meat goes a long way in stir-fries, even though this doesn't exactly qualify as vegetarianism, it's still a small step towards being kinder to our world's resources.

I've been buying rump tails of beef from the chill cabinet at Wing Yip Supermarket on the North Circular (London). It's a bit of the luck of the draw as sometimes you get tender cuts that can be flashed up in the pan as steaks, or it's connective tissue-heavy and best used for this dish. I get the 5kg pack and cut it into portions which I then bag up and freeze.

I like a strong flavour but you can adjust the ingredients to your taste.

Ingredients for two people:

12oz to 1lb beef (rump tail or even stewing steak)
1 medium Spanish onion
1 red and 1 green pepper
A selection from mange tout, baby sweetcorn, cucumber batons, broccoli according to availability.
Fresh coriander
Peanut or rapeseed oil
Sesame oil

MARINADE
Half a bulb of garlic (about 8 cloves), peeled and crushed
1 knob of ginger, peeled and grated or 1 dessertspoon of powdered ginger
1 dessertspoon of Demerara brown sugar, or palm sugar
A dash of honey (optional)
Soy sauce Chilli seeds or sliced chillis (optional)

Start with a very sharp knife. I sharpen mine each time before I cook using this very effective Japanese minoSharp. I used to use a carborundum stone but this works better.

The reason your knife must be sharp is that you have to shred the beef finely. This was always the sous chef job my mother gave me, and she trained me well! Which may explain my admiration for sharp objects.

Here's the chef's method. Note the bent knuckles so the flat of the knife blade rests against the upper finger joints instead of slicing through them.

If you couldn't see through the beef once it was shredded, there'd be hell to pay. Hmm, I must be slipping. But at least I cut against the grain of the meat, keeping the beef tender by chopping up the long fibres of tissue

Mix the marinade sauce into the beef and place to one side.

Wash and prepare the vegetables as we did for stir-fry noodles and seared salmon.

To cook, get a heavy frying pan or wok very hot and add a tablespoon of peanut or rapeseed oil. Heat until it smokes. Add the beef and stir. 

Stir until all the pink disappears, add a splash of sesame oil, and place in bowl to keep warm while you stir-fry your vegetables in batches. Remember, hot but crunchy. 

When the last vegetables are cooked, add all the vegetables and beef to the pan to briefly heat up. Add another splash of sesame oil as you stir.

Serve on noodles or boiled rice, and sprinkle with coriander leaves.

How to order Chinese food from the window: Canton Restaurant WC2

The Canton 11 Newport Street London WC2H 7JR T: 020 7437 6220 Sun-Thurs 12 noon - 11.30pm Fri-Sat 12 noon - 12.30am Cost: £6 to £15 per head without alcohol. I'm devoting my first restaurant review to an old favourite of mine, The Canton in Soho, London. I started going here in my youth in the 1980s when I could club for England and go nights on end without sleep. In those days you'd emerge from Alice's or Gossips or the Kit Kat Club in the early hours, famished and longing for hot tasty food, and you would head straight for either breakfast at the Cavendish Hotel or something spicy at the Canton. The Canton is no longer a 24 hour establishment, sadly, due to Westminster Council indulging killjoy impulses. But it is still going strong as a good inexpensive and reliable eatery. For a speedy meal when I'm caught in the West End I usually do what my fellow Chinese bredren do under the circumstances and order from the window. Typical of Cantonese cuisine, you'll find roast duck, chicken, crispy fat pork and char siu hanging up over trays of squid, pigs' ears and roast gizzards. The Roadkill Special, as it struck me once when viewing the flattened poultry, is quick and delicious, and costs little more than a Big Mac meal or other High Street fast food. Duck and char siu (lean barbecue pork) on boiled rice with a garnish of vegetables and a pot of green tea is around £6. If you go during peak eating times times, expect to find yourself sharing a table with other diners. The service is brisk but friendly and no-one hangs around for a long lingering meal. This is fast food Chinese-style. The other day a friend and I felt adventurous and ordered a plate of the usual duck and char siu plus the pigs' ears and squid with choi sum in oyster sauce and boiled rice. Shame, they've stopped serving gizzards due to a fall-off in demand. Can't imagine why. We probably eat this every time we chow down on your average sausage, if you're lucky. Squid and pigs' ears The dominant flavour of the pigs' ears is star anise as found in Five Spice powder. The cartilage makes this quite crunchy — a favourite Chinese texture — and the covering skin melts down slightly so it's gelatinous. The squid is tender and the tentacles a little chewy, as I like them. Roast duck and char siu pork The duck and char siu were tasty as always, although the duck is quite fatty. Served on plain boiled rice to cleanse the palate between bites, and with fresh choi sum with oyster sauce, this is great traditional Chinese food for carnivores.