Pork and charred green beans

Another confession

Since I wrote my ‘reveal all’ Cooks Column and confessed that I now have condescended to use carrots in my stir-fries, I’m quickly becoming a convert to frozen stir-fry vegetables. 

It’s certainly quick, doing away with the preparation of whatever vegetable you’re using and I find I have less waste (no more finding mouldy bags of something in the vegie drawer of the fridge).

Most of the early Chinese in Melbourne came from Southern China and so those first Chinese cafОs used Cantonese-style cooking. It was only later that the northern Chinese arrived with their Szechuan-style recipes which used chilli, different spices and their tongue-numbing Szechuan pepper.

One of my daughters has started using frozen vegetables and enthused about the Szechuan-style pork and green bean dish that she’d cooked using frozen beans. I thought you might like to try it. 

Pork and charred green beans

 Ingredients

250gm pork mince

2 heaped cups of frozen green beans

¹/₂ onion finely chopped

1 tspn chopped garlic

1 tspn chopped green ginger

peanut oil for cooking

For the sauce - mix together:

1 tbspn dark soya sauce

1 tbspn sherry

1 tspn sugar

1¹/₂ tspn chilli garlic sauce

Method

Usually I stress that stir frying vegetables are done quickly and only until they are JUST cooked, retaining their freshness and crunch. For this recipe, the trick is to actually quickly char the beans in a very hot wok, then remove  them before they go limp.

Stir fry the onion, garlic and ginger for a minute or two, then add minced pork, breaking it up as you go and continue stir-frying over a hot flame until it’s cooked - should only take a few minutes. 

Add the mixed sauce and continue cooking, then add the charred beans for another minute. That’s it! Serve with some plain boiled rice.

Glen