Stir-Fried Beef with Wood Ear Mushrooms

Asian cuisine is one of my favourites, so I'm suggesting this very simple recipe, whose ingredients can nowadays be found in any Asian grocery shop. I chose this recipe because the mushrooms it uses aren't very common and have an almost cartilaginous bite. The recipe in question is my own — I didn't read it in any book — but it's not far from the dish I tried with this kind of mushroom in a restaurant... the fun of Asian cooking is experimenting and trying new combinations. I hope you like it.
I believe these mushrooms are also known as black fungus or tree ears, and their Chinese name is Mu-Err.

Ingredients

"A handful" of wood ear mushrooms
3 beef steaks
1 onion
"A handful" of mangetout
½ green pepper
¼ litre beef stock
3 or 4 tablespoons soy sauce
A piece of ginger root about 2 cm long
1 teaspoon ground ginger
Black pepper
1 teaspoon sesame oil (optional)
Vegetable oil
Cornflour to thicken the sauce
Long-grain rice.

Method

Cut the beef into pieces of about 3x3 cm and leave it to marinate in a bowl for 20 min. with the soy sauce, a teaspoon of sesame oil, another of vegetable oil, another of ground ginger and a pinch of black pepper.

Heat some water and soak the mushrooms in it for 15 minutes to rehydrate them; this kind of mushroom swells a lot when rehydrated, so you don't need too many.

Meanwhile, cut the onions into fairly large pieces — I cut each into 12: first in half, then each half into three wedges, which I then cut in half. Cut the pepper into not-too-large strips and set aside. Clean the mangetout and trim the ends. Slice the ginger root very thinly.

Pour a little vegetable oil into the wok and stir-fry the beef without the marinade. Remove and set aside.
Add a little more oil and add the onion, pepper, mangetout and ginger root. Stir-fry over high heat for about 3 minutes, add the mushrooms, the beef and the marinade and keep stir-frying for a couple more minutes; add the stock and a tablespoon of soy sauce, check the salt and cook until the mangetout are done, about five minutes. Thicken the sauce with cornflour.
Serve with rice.

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