Sunday, June 05, 2005

Beef knockout stir-fry

If you’d asked what my favorite meal was when I was a kid, I would’ve told you it was a hamburger, french fries and a Coke. If you’d asked me sometime later than that (college years and up, I suppose), I would’ve cast my vote for a really good piece of prime rib, like the one I had at the Algonquin Hotel before going to see a tribute to Bill Evans at the JVC Jazz Festival years ago. (We saw Dave McKenna at the Algonquin, too, which made the evening even better.) These days, I’m inclined to smirk and say I’ll never become a vegetarian because of prime rib.

So last night I cook myself a light little beef stir-fry and am completely knocked out for the evening. This wasn’t a huge slab of meat; it was some sliced sirloin, and not even as much as I usually use. I used Gloria Bley Miller’s recipe for “Basic Stir-Fried Beef I” from The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook. It calls for a pound of vegetables; I used bamboo shoots and a mix of spinach and Asian greens from the garden (bok choy, mizuna and heaven knows what else). I poured all of it over rice, which soaked up the juices nicely. It was pretty tasty, and it seemed like a light meal, but I guess it wasn’t. Either that, or my body is finding that it needs less and less meat as it gets older.

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