Kan Shao Green Beans


Ingredients:

~1 lb		Green beans
1/4-1 lb	Ground pork
1/3		Green sweet pepper
1/3		Red sweet pepper (optional - otherwise more green)
1/3		Yellow sweet pepper (optional - ditto)

1/2 Tbsp	Brown sugar
2 Tbsp		Peanut oil
1/2 Tbsp	Sesame oil
3 Tbsp		Soy sauce
1 Tbsp		Rice vinegar
2 Tsp		Dry sherry (or Chinese rice cooking wine)
1 Tsp		Dried red pepper flakes (for whole peppers, see 'Comments')
1 Tbsp		Fresh ginger slivers


Directions:

Slice sweet peppers, _save seeds_.
Prepare beans (trim off ends, bad spots, etc). You can either leave them
long, or cut them into smaller pieces (2-3").
Chop ginger into thin slivers (about 1 mm square, and 1/2" long).

Mix sugar, soy sauce, ginger. Set aside.
Mix sherry, vinegar. Set aside.

Heat peanut oil in wok at 350 degrees. When hot, add red pepper flakes, stir
10 seconds.

Add ground pork, stir for 1 minute (or until pork is completely cooked). Add
green beans, stir for ~2 minutes (or until beans are as cooked as desired).

Add sugar, soy sauce, ginger, "stir until liquid evaporates" (that's what the
original recipe called for, I generally leave it 1-2 minutes or so).

Add sweet pepper; stir 15 seconds or so. (You can also add this a little
earlier, during the preceding 'liquid evaporates stage - but towards the
end, they don't need long to cook, especially the coloured peppers.)

Add sherry, vinegar and sesame oil; stir 10 seconds.

Serve *immediately*.


Comments

These are somewhat less work than some of my other favourite Chinese dishes
(the beans are easy to prepare, and the sweet pepper almost as little, and
that's pretty much all there is to it).

I use a West Bend electric wok, which has good temperature control, and the
times are all based on that. A classical wok could be used, but you may need
to adjust the times.

Keep stirring the mixture as constantly as you can - the more it's stirred,
the more consistently the beans will be cooked.

You can replace the red pepper flakes with about 3 times the equivalent
[since i) you won't eat them, and ii) when they are whole you don't get as
much of the pepper acids out of them when they cook] in whole peppers.

This recipe can be safely approximately doubled by doubling materials, and
extending the main cooking stage by a minute or so, but to do more than that,
you have to do it in batches, otherwise with too much stuff in the wok the
food will not cook at the right rate.