Beef ricebowl with poached egg

A week! It`s been only a week, but I felt like ages since my last post. I have tons of (extremely lame) reasons for delaying my cooking-snapping and editing pictures-posting routine. Now here I am, ready for my posting marathon.
Oh, before I continue, let me wish you Merry Christmas!! I hope you and your beloved ones enjoy, or enjoyed the celebration and the food!

As for me here, it`s getting colder and colder and the snow just keeps falling since last night. After feeding him store-bought food for days, I knew it`s time to make it up to him today. So, off we went to the store this afternoon despite the snow and the temptation to stay under my warm blanket. And as today is Saturday, beef is on the menu.
Look at this baby. Don`t you want to have a steak sizzling on your plate?
I do. I really do. And he certainly does. I could hear him drooling. But if I do make steak, he`ll finish the whole meat in seconds. And I`m not going to let it happen.

So I diced it up instead. I wanted to caramelize these cubes, so I just used a little sesame oil and dry seasoning for the flavors: black peppers, salt, garlic powder, cayenne powder, and ginger powder.You can certainly use your favorite ingredients for flavoring, but I think it`s better to use dry ingredients to avoid adding water content during cooking the beef.

Now, set your non-stick frying pan on high heat until it gets smoking hot. It has to be really hot, otherwise the beef won`t get caramelized. No oil, please. So, when it`s hot already, dump in the cubes, try to separate each cubes so they don`t stick each other. I clearly put too many cubes here and that wasn`t good because the heat is trapped between the meats and it will turn into steam, which is not a good thing for caramelization. But, what can I say, I`m too lazy to cook them in batches, so I just turned the heat up to the highest and let them cook that way.

After the beef is done to your liking (always well done for me), set the beef aside on a plate. Now look at the grease left from the beef. It`s something between yucky and yummy. It`s up to you whether you want to clean it up, or use it. I did the latter one.

Meat without vegetable(s) is no good. It`s like messing up with the good balance of yin and yang (choose your own version of which is which here). So I went for cabbage. Wash and chop. Chop chop chop.

And toss them in the frying pan with or without the grease from the beef. Stir fry the cabbage until it gets wilted and looks a bit greener.

Get a cup and mix water, salt, pepper, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and ginger powder in it. Pour the sauce into the cabbage, stir well, adjust the taste, and set aside when it`s done.

Another item for the dish. Poached egg. Oh yeah, I (am learning to) poach eggs now.You can find sooo many many many ways to poach eggs in the internet, but here`s how I do it.
Simmer water in a pot. While it simmers, crack an egg and place it in a small cup or bowl. You can get a laddle with holes (I`m pretty sure it has a name), or a skimmer like what I used.

Then, slowly and gently pour the egg into the simmering water.




The egg white will instantly spread out and curdle at this point. With your skimmer, quickly bring the white toward the yolk so that the yolk is tightly wrapped around by firm white. Try to shape the egg into a round shape if you can. My skimmer is too big so it`s difficult to make a nice round poached egg. Or probably I just suck at this thing. I choose to blame my skimmer, though.Or him for going in and out the kitchen.

And here`s what I`ve got. An elliptic-shaped poached egg with a pointy edge. But egg is an ellipse, right? Oh, I need more and more practice to make it looks better.

Well well, time to arrange the items into a dish.
Get steamed rice in a bowl, top it with stir-fried cabbage, place the poached egg on the center, arrange the beef cubes around it, and sprinkle green onions to bring out the beauty.

The egg? Despite the look,  it was just delicious. The white was firm and the yolk was beautifully runny. And orange. I just love its orangeness.

Happy holiday!!

Ingredients:
Beef steak (if I may call it as steak)
Beef, cubed
Black pepper
Salt
Garlic powder
Ginger powder
Cayenne powder
Sesame oil

Stir-fried cabbage
Cabagge, chopped
Soy sauce
Oyster sauce
Sesame oil
Garlic powder
Salt and pepper

Poached egg
Whole egg