Hunan Stir-Fried Beef with Millet Chillies

Ingredients

• 500 g beef skirt, flank or bavette
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 2 tsp cornflour
• 1/4 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 4 tbsp groundnut oil
• 60 g fresh red millet chillies or bird's eye chillies
• 60 g pickled chillies (paojiao), drained
• 2 sticks celery
• 6 cloves garlic
• 25 g fresh ginger
• 3 spring onions
• 1/2 tsp fine salt
• 1 tsp toasted sesame oil

Before you cook

• Firm the beef in the freezer for forty minutes so it slices cleanly.
• Cut the beef across the grain into slices about two millimetres thick.
• Mix the beef with the oyster sauce, both soy sauces, Shaoxing wine, cornflour, white pepper, cumin and one tablespoon of the oil, then leave it for fifteen minutes.
• Slice the fresh chillies into rings and roughly chop the pickled chillies.
• Cut the celery into thin diagonal slices.
• Mince the garlic, shred the ginger, and cut the spring onions into three-centimetre lengths.

Steps

1. Heat a wok over the fiercest flame you have until a wisp of smoke rises from the dry metal.
2. Pour in the remaining three tablespoons of oil and swirl it up the sides.
3. Slide in the beef in one layer and leave it undisturbed for thirty seconds to take colour.
4. Toss the beef hard for a further minute, until it is browned outside but still pink in the middle, then scrape it out onto a plate.
5. Return the wok to the heat with whatever oil is left behind.
6. Add the garlic, ginger, fresh chillies and pickled chillies and stir them for twenty seconds.
7. Tip in the celery and toss for thirty seconds so it keeps its snap.
8. Return the beef and all its resting juices to the wok.
9. Sprinkle over the salt and toss everything together for forty-five seconds.
10. Add the spring onion lengths and give the wok two more tosses.
11. Pull the wok off the heat, stir in the sesame oil, and serve immediately.