Peppered Beef

This is a repost from my other abandoned but soon to be refurbished blog at wordpress` Life is Beautiful.

It only involves frying the beef till they are brown, sauteiing with the garlic and the veggies and putting a tablespoon of soy sauce and sprinkling with lots of pepper!

I do most of the cooking here but when Rad and I get tired of the taste of my cooking, he volunteers to cook. I don’t complain coz when he cooks, I really eat and I mean EAT! There is this fastfood chain we usually go to for lunch. We always order their pepper rice because it appeals to our spicy taste buds and well we are really getting our 500 yen worth hehehe. So, yesterday, Rad went to Mom’s (supermarket) and bought some beef cubes and he made his version of pepper rice only he calls it Peppered Beef and Mushroom. I must say, I would pay twice what I pay for my pepper rice for what he cooked last night! It was really good! It was literally peppered with pepper, spicy but the beef taste was there and so with the green peppers. It was so good, twas a pity there was no Coca-cola to go with it. We are trying to cut our calorie intake by cutting on the sweets and soda drinks but last night, we ate all the rice cooked for supposedly two meals,, good-bye diet! Mangantayon!

Peppered Pork and Gingered Red Pepper

Tomorrow is Marine Day or Ocean Day or Umi no Hi (海の日）, a National Holiday. Although we do not necessarily abide by national holidays at the lab, I have decided not to take advantage of the holiday and that this be the last entry for this week and to seriously continue on the paper that I am supposed to be writing. Oh how I wish blogging could earn me that degree!

This was our dinner tonight. I am always on the lookout for easy to make recipes and this one I found from The Australian Women`s Weekly’s Cooking for Two recipe book.

Peppered Pork Ingredients:

• 2 teaspoons drained green peppercorns, crushed
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 pork butterfly steaks
• 1 tablespoon oil

Directions:

Combine peppercorns and sugar in bowl, rub over oth sides of steaks, cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Heat oil in pan, add pork, cook until browned and tender. This recipe can be prepared a day ahead.

The pork called for a side dish of gingered red pepper.

Gingered Red Pepper Ingredients:

• 20g butter
• 1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
• 1 large red pepper, thinly sliced
• 2 teaspoons honey

Directions:

Heat butter in pan, add ginger and pepper, cook, stirring, until pepper is just soft; stir in honey. This recipe must be made before serving.

Since I don’t have whole green peppercorns, I used the common ground pepper and two porkchops. For the gingered pepper, I made about 1 tablespoon of grated ginger and I used all of it anyway.

The whole meal also called for a recipe for Chinese cabbage but since I don’t have that in my supply, I steamed some spinach again but served it without the bonito shavings.

First, I tasted the porkchops, and I told Rad that they're a bit bland. But he was ahead of me because he ate both the pork and the red pepper simultaneously. And it really was good! The combination of the sweet and ginger-spicy red pepper plus the peppered pork was so delicious and the steamed spinach was a the perfect neutralizer. It was so good, dinner was a flash. Or we really were that hungry. Mangantayon!