Beef and Black Bean Sauce (by Biggs)

When I was deciding what to make for dinner I remembered that G went through a period a few years back of ordering beef and black bean sauce at every given opportunity. Unfortunately every recipe I looked up had only two steps - fry the beef, add the black bean sauce.

But, I pushed on and eventually found a recipe that involved me taking a lunchtime trip to Burlington's to purchase black beans. The recipe called for fermented black beans but the only options were dried, preserved or salted. I wasn't going to be bothered soaking the dried ones so it was a toss up between a small packet of preserved beans that seemed a little dry or a large packet of salted beans that seemed to have the right moist texture. At the risk of having a huge amount of (potentially) inedible beans left in our cupboard I went with the large packet. The instructions on the back sensibly suggested giving them a thorough rinsing prior to eating.

Even though I followed these instruction and gave the beans a good rinse they still tasted like.....poison, salty salty poison. But, once they were added to some fried beef, snow peas, onion, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, rice wine and served on rice...they were delicious.

In other news, G very generously agreed I could use his precious Japanese-fuck-off-sharp-do-not-touch-bitey-san knife to thinly slice the beef but at the last minute I chickened out and just used an old blunt one I found our drawer. Dinner was served and I still have all my fingers.