Stir-fried green beans with minced beef and jasmine rice

meat Chinese · medium · 45 min, including 40 hands-on

Green beans blistered in oil, minced beef cooked until crisp, toasted chillies, garlic, ginger and Sichuan pepper: Sichuan gan bian si ji dou made into a generous meal, with almost as much beef as beans, served with jasmine rice.

Ingredients for two

Method

1. Rinse the rice in a sieve until the water runs clear, drain, put in a saucepan with 285 g water and bring to the boil. Cover and cook over a very low heat for 12 minutes, then rest off the heat for 10 minutes without uncovering. While the rice cooks and rests, pinch off the tough stem ends of the beans, wash, dry thoroughly in a tea towel and halve into roughly 6 cm lengths. Chop the garlic and ginger, slice the spring onions, keeping whites and greens separate, cut open the chillies, crush the Sichuan pepper with the flat of a knife and divide into two piles. Mix the soya sauce, wine, vinegar and sugar in a bowl. Have everything ready before heating the pan.
2. Heat the 35 g oil in the 30 cm frying pan over a high heat until shimmering. Spread the beans in a single layer and leave untouched for 1 minute 30 seconds, then turn roughly every minute for 8–10 minutes in total: the skins should wrinkle and blister, brown spots appear, and a bean should bend without snapping. Season with the 2 g salt at the end of cooking.
3. Taste a bean. If still raw at the centre, pour the 30 g water around the edge over a high heat and stir-fry for 1–2 minutes until it has evaporated. Lift the beans onto a plate with a slotted spoon, leaving the oil in the pan.
4. Return the pan to a high heat, spread the beef in the remaining oil and sear for 2 minutes without stirring. Break up finely and cook over a high heat for another 5–6 minutes, stirring only occasionally: the crumbs should sizzle in their own fat, brown and turn crisp at the edges, with no liquid left in the bottom. Do not add salt to this already-salted koshered meat.
5. If more than 1 tbsp fat remains in the pan, spoon off the excess. Push the beef to one side, reduce the heat to medium and toast the chillies and half the Sichuan pepper in the fat for 20 seconds, until the chillies turn burgundy and smell toasted, without blackening. Add the garlic, ginger and spring onion whites and stir for 30 seconds until fragrant. Return the beans, increase the heat to high and pour the sauce around the hot edge; it should sizzle. Stir-fry for 45 seconds to 1 minute, until the sauce has evaporated and glazed the beans. The dish should stay dry.
6. Off the heat, add the remaining Sichuan pepper, spring onion greens and sesame oil, and toss. Taste a bean: if it needs salt, add a few drops of soya sauce rather than salt, since the koshered meat is already salted. Fluff the rice with a fork and serve on two plates, distributing the crisp beef evenly among the beans.

On your plate

Cooking tips

Choose fine, fresh beans. Wet beans splatter and will not blister. The original dish contains ya cai, Sichuan salted fermented mustard greens, which are unavailable kosher; the salt added to the beans in step 2 takes their place. In a pan smaller than 30 cm, blister the beans in two batches and allow an extra 8 minutes. For a milder or hotter dish, use 2 or 6 chillies. Check that the condiments and wine are certified kosher pareve.

Equipment : 30 cm frying pan, saucepan with a lid, clean tea towel, spatula, slotted spoon, small bowl

Gan bian si ji dou (干煸四季豆), Sichuan dry-fried green beans with minced meat; Menutov's kosher adaptation, with beans blistered in a frying pan instead of restaurant-style deep-frying.