Tuesdays at the Table

It seems kind of ridiculous for me to participate this week, seeing as how I have managed to avoid cooking dinner for the last five evenings. Perhaps I should write a post about my ingenious ability to shirk kitchen duty....

The moment I imagine you have all been waiting for since last Tuesday's amazingly yummy post....drum roll, please....

What's that? The drum roll is too much? You haven't been waiting with bated breath for today's installment?

Ahem, well. This is embarrassing. I must hide my face in shame now. I am pretty sure I am too mortified to cook dinner tonight. (See how I did that there? Cue Night #6 with no kitchen slave labor!)

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Beef and Cucumber Stir-fry

Ingredients:
1 pound beef steak (sirloin, top loin or rump)
2 tablespoons honey2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1 cucumber
1 red bell pepper (if you don’t like red bell pepper, substitute snow peas)
4 scallions
3 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons oil

Directions:

Slice the beef into strips ¼ inch wide and 3 inches long, trimming away all the fat.

In a large bowl, mix the honey, soy sauce and chili powder. Add the beef strips and stir. Set aside while preparing vegetables.

Peel the cucumber and slice lengthwise. Scrape out and discard the seeds. Cut into strip ¼ inch wide and 2 inches long. Wash the bell pepper and cut it in half. Remove and discard the stem and seeds. Then slice the pepper into strips ¼ inch wide and 2 inches long. Wash the scallions. Cut of the root tips and top 2 inches of the green ends and discard them. Cut the remaining white and green parts into ½ inch pieces. Peel and finely chop the garlic. Set the vegetables aside.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a wok or frying pan over high heat. Remove the steak strips from the bowl, keeping any remaining liquid (marinade) in the bowl, and add the steak to the wok. Stir-fry for 1 minute. When the meat is no longer pink, return to the bowl containing the marinade.

Wipe out the wok so that any remaining honey does not burn. Heat the remaining oil in the wok over high heat and stir-fry cucumber, bell pepper, scallions and garlic for about 2 minutes, or until the vegetables just begin to soften. They should stay fairly crisp. Quickly return the steak and any remaining marinade to the wok and heat for 1 minute, or just until the steak gets hot and the liquid boils. Serve over rice.

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I got this super easy recipe from a cookbook my grandmother gave me at a wedding shower. It's called Help! My Apartment has a Kitchen! Too funny, right? And so totally me.