Tomatoes and Beef over rice

Being in Hyde Park, NY, having good Chinese food or authentic Chinese food is pretty impossible. So sometimes it calls for an opportunity to cook it yourself, if you have all the ingredients that is. Lucky for me, I only live 1.5-2 hours away from home, so I can pick up groceries from Chinatown every time I go home. I have all the typical seasonings to make basic Chinese food.

Growing up I never really enjoyed tomatoes. So automatically, I wasn't too fond of tomatoes and beef over rice. My brothers loved this dish though. This dish is actually pretty homestyle, every Chinese restaurant would make it in their own way. I only started liking this dish from this one restaurant called "Goody's". It was different from any other restaurant and they would also whip an egg into the sauce, like how they make egg drop soup (this style would translate into "wet/smooth egg"). Too bad I stopped going to them after I found a cigarette butt in my noodles while eating there one time. They have since relocated or closed.

This was my attempt to make the dish here at school when I was craving some homey Chinese food. All was apprx to taste, so adjust the seasonings to your own taste. I liked mine a bit more sweet and I like a lot of sauce. Growing up Chinese, the more rice you eat means that the dish/sauce is really tasty, this is actually a compliment to the Chef, when you have multiples of rice to eat with the dish. I love the extra sauce so that every grain or rice would be soaked up.





Here is the recipe.

.25 lb sliced Flank steak
2 ea tomates, washed cored and cut into wedges.

Marinade

1 t sesame oil
1 dash white pepper powder
.5 T sugar
1 T oyster sauce
1 T light soy
1.5 T dark soy
1 T tapioca starch

Those are just apprx. I marinaded the beef.
sauteed the beef, took it out, sauteed some garlic and thinly sliced
ginger, put the tomatoes in and then the beef put the sauce in.

Sauce

1 t sesame oil
2 T light soy
1 T dark soy
1T oyster
5 T ketchup (or to taste)
pinch of white pepper
sugar to taste

That was also apprx. I did it all by taste and added more if I needed
it. Then I mixed a slurry with cornstarch and water and put it in the
wok along with the beef and tomatoes till it bubbled and thickened.