This is one of our favorite stir-fry dishes and if I can only convey one thing to you about this recipe it is this: do NOT fear the fish sauce. Believe me, I’m as adverse to the stuff, in its undiluted form, as anyone. When I’m pouring it out I actually hold my breath so as not to smell it. But I promise you that it does not bring any kind of fishy flavor to the dish and, I think, just acts as a flavor booster (“Go Flavor!”).
Speaking of fish, isn’t it funny how the best thing we can say about it is that it doesn’t taste (or smell) “fishy”? When we talk about a great steak we had we don’t say “It was delicious; didn’t taste at all beefy.”
I think what I love most about this dish is the unique combination of flavors like peanuts + mint (unique, that is, to my Midwestern US palate; probably if I was a middle-aged Thai woman I would find this about as “unique” as butter on toast. Not that I’m middle-aged. No way. I intend to live well into my 110’s). And the shallots are also lovely. I don’t find this to be especially spicy but you can control the heat by adjusting the serrano or jalapeno peppers.
The recipe calls for “blade steak” but offers flank as an acceptable substitute. Good thing too as I have never, ever seen anything labeled “blade steak” here in my little town of Chicago. Don’t even get me started on the completely inconsistent, regionally-influenced, fickle nomenclature of cuts of meat.
To make this an easy week-night meal I serve it with plain old rice and edamame.
Stir-Fried Thai-Style Beef with Chiles and Shallots from Cook’s Illustrated, July, 2005.
Fish sauce is an important and very basic part of most southeast/east Asian cooking, although it is not always used in EVERY recipe. Without it, many oriental dishes lose that certain “je ne sais quoi” that makes them taste just right. Breathe deeply when you pour out the fish sauce. Embrace it. It is one of the ingredients that really makes or breaks oriental cooking. It is inexpensive. Typically we will purchase a bottle, keep it around for years as we slowly use it up, and then, when the salt has precipitated within the solution to really large chunks, we’ll throw out the last inch or so and buy a new bottle. Bottom line: if you are never using fish sauce, you are not cooking authentic oriental recipes.
You’re right Scott, I need to learn to love the fish sauce. Baby steps!
Thanks!
Oh, one other thing. If you want your cooking to taste like an authentic oriental recipe, don’t use jalapeno peppers. They have a distinct, non-asian taste. One is better served to use the small dried asian peppers. If kept whole and sauted in the peanut oil (you DO always use peanut oil in your wok, don’t you?) before cooking the other ingredients, they infuse the oil with their spicyness. They can either be removed or left in, but one is well served to warn guests not to eat them. As a cook, you can make your dishes milder by removing the seeds from the peppers prior to cooking (most of the heat is in the oils and capiscum found in the seeds). Any time you are seeding hot peppers, please remember to wear nitrile or rubber gloves. (I recently seeded about 3/4 pound of jalepenos for salsa, and my hands were burning for a while, even after repeated washings.). Ok, that’s enough of my suggestions for now. Happy cooking!
And you’re right about the peppers too. As you probably know, Cook’s Illustrated develops these recipes so that they’re do-able by most people. And I suspect most people have more access to jalapenos than dried Asian peppers. I, however, have no excuse!
Yes, I do use peanut oil but I don’t use a wok. Again, it’s the Cook’s Illustrated influence. Chris Kimball has been a loud and lonely voice in his stand against woks for American kitchens (and American stoves). Essentially, he says that woks were made for Asian-style burners and that when used on the kind of stove most Americans have, you don’t get enough flat cooking surface to stir fry properly. There is certainly plenty of disagreement about this but I have had great success using a traditional non-stick skillet for all of my stir frying.
I have also had pepper residue linger for a while. Whatever you do when this happens, don’t remove your contact lenses with your pepper-fingers!
Thanks again for reading and commenting!
Scott, if you’re interested, here is Cook’s most recent testing of woks vs. traditional skillets:
1. Link didn’t come through. I presume you meant: http://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment/overview.asp?docid=11449
2. Rereading my comments, I seem to have come across as if I were on my high horse. I neither meant to appear so critical nor didactic. I am not a cooking purist or kitchen luddite. The bottom line is in the eating, not cooking.
Personally, I think it’s -fun- to use a wok for oriental food, just as it’s -fun- to use a rounded saute pan and flip and turn food with the pan without using a spatula.
3. In my home, for Chinese food, we tend to use a steel wok that has about a 6″ flat bottom. It is about 25 years old or so, and “encrusted” with tons of seasoning from countless meals prepared in it. It seems to work well on old fashioned coil electric stoves when the bottom is touching the coils. (However, the repeated exposure to high heat has slightly warped the bottom as a result.) Currently we have a gas stove, and that seems to work ok with the wok as well, but takes longer to heat up sufficiently. We also have a non-nonstick (would that make it a “stick?”) small Calphelon wok that we sometomes use in addition to the big steel wok. …and yes, we also have been known to sometimes use a big nonstick (or stick) skillet.
4. FWIW, our favorite Chinese cookbook (and there are many good ones out there) is Irene Kuo’s “The Key to Chinese Cooking” (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1882).
…uh, the book was published in 1982, not 1882. Feel free to edit previous reply and delete this if that is easier for you.
Yes, that’s the link I meant to send, thanks.
You did not come across as a didactic high-horse rider; not at all. I hope my site is of interest to people who really cook and those people have opinions about cooking and good experience and advice to share.
Thanks for the book recommendation too; I will look into it.
Stay tuned for my post on Dorie’s “Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good.” It’s in the oven now and looks pretty promising.
Also I’m about to announce the next book I will review. Hope you like to bake too!
What a lively discussion! I am pro-wok even though I understand the cons. I just like using one. Makes me feel adventurous.
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