Recipe of the Month

This recipe came about from the urge to cook a wintery long-cooked stew, but to inject some cheerful zappy flavours into it. It was mostly inspired by a braise that is one of the menu staples in Belfast's cult Chinese restaurant, the Sun Kee.

The Sun Kee's long-cooked stew was a revelation that exposed a different type of Chinese food, a far cry from the usual deep-fried, stir-fried, quickly cooked Chinese foods one normally thinks of. The beef taste is backed by a powerful shot of star anise, along with all the other flavours we associate with Asian cooking: spring onion, ginger, garlic, soy.

The language barrier made it impossible to source this recipe from the restaurant, so we turned to our cookery texts to get some ideas. First up was the ever-reliable Ken Hom, a cookery writer we rate very highly.

Hom printed a similar braise in his book: "Ken Hom's Chinese Kitchen". Here were the flavours we recognised from the Sun Kee, with star anise and so on, and above all the use of turnips, which authentically should be Chinese white radish, but which our common old swede fits the bill nicely, and indeed it was swede which the Sun Kee used.

Our other trusted authority on all things Chinese is the little known Yong Yap Cotterell. Our edition of her book, "The Chinese Kitchen", was first published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1986, and it has served us busily since that date, regularly being taken off the shelf. Yong Yap offered a recipe for Braised Spiced Brisket, which was flavoured with anise, but didn't include the turnips.

So here is a mix of the three recipes. It's an east-meets-Irish stew of chunky turnip and spuds with long cooked beef, but you wouldn't find these flavourings in an Irish stew!

Chinese-Irish Beef and Turnip Braise

2lbs stewing beef, in one piece
2 tablespoons groundnut oil
1 inch ginger, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
3 spring onions, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
3 pods star anise
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
1 capful of rice wine, or dry sherry
Half a small yellow turnip, diced into large dice
2 medium-sized potatoes, diced as the turnip

Cover the beef with water, and simmer on a relatively high heat for 10 minutes. (This technique arrived because Chinese beef was always quite tough). Take out the beef, reserving the poaching water, and slice into long thick slices.

In a small bowl, mix together the salt, sugar, anise, soy sauce and hoisin sauce.

Heat a wok; add the goundnut oil, followed by the ginger and garlic. Stir-fry until the oil is flavoured, and then add the sliced beef and the spring onions. Splash in the rice wine, and then pour over some of the reserved poaching liquid, enough to cover the beef. Turn down the heat slightly, and skim off the scum that comes to the surface. Add the flavourings and spices from the small bowl, and transfer the whole lot to a caserole dish and put in a medium-high oven for 2 hours. Take out the casserole after 2 hours, and add the cubed turnip and potato. Braise these for a further 30 minutes until soft.

The best thing to serve this with is some steamed broccoli, dressed with some more chopped spring onions and drizzled with sesame oil.

The Sun Kee, 28 Donegal Pass, Belfast BT7 Tel: (028) 90312016
The Chinese Kitchen Yong Yap Cotterell (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)
Ken Hom's Chinese Kitchen (Pavillion)

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text © John & Sally McKenna
illustrations © Ken Buggy