Bud Chives With Beef

Bud chives with beef


Bud chives

There are western chives, which look like spring onions but are more delicate with a hollow center and there are Chinese chives, which are flat. Chinese chives are more pungent in flavor than western chives, especially the flat Chinese chives while the bud chives are less so. The flat chives flourish in our weather, and my patch of flat chives has been with me for about 10 years. These perennials can be cut down to the soil level and within 3 days they will put up an inch of new shoots. They never get eaten by snails or any insects and I suspect that they keep my veg plot free from pests. They do need a lot of fertilizers or they begin to look like weeds.


Flat Chinese chives in the middle.

Flat chives are usually cut finely for making omelettes. A special version of flat chives is the jiu hwang, light yellow chives, which are grown like white asparagus--under cover and deprived of sunlight so there is no color pigment in them. These are more delicate and sweet but not easily available because they deteriorate within hours of cutting. Bud chives are from China and are sweet with a nice bite. I suspect that bud chives are just the budding stems from the ordinary flat chives but Chinese farmers have a way of growing only stems with buds. My flat chives grow stems with buds too if I don't harvest them but those stems are too hard to eat. As a simple veg dish, you can fry up a plate of plain bud chives or better still, add some meat such as prawns, chicken or pork but they go best with beef. Like we all know, sometimes the simplest dishes are the most delicious, and this is one of them.




Bud Chives With Beef
120 g bud chives (about 2 bundles)
250 g beef tenderloin or sirloin

Prep: Snap the chive from the bottom. It will break at the point where the stem is too hard for eating. Throw that part away (into the compost!) and either cut or snap the younger stem into 4 cm ( 1 1/2 inches) lengths. Cut the beef into thin strips and marinade with: 2 t light soy sauce, 1 t oyster sauce, 2 heaped t corn flour, 2 T water, 1 T rice wine, 1/2 t fine sugar, some freshly ground pepper, 1/8 t salt and a splash of good (Korean is best) sesame oil. Leave for 5 minutes.

1. Heat 1 T veg oil into a wok, add the chives and a pinch of salt and stir-fry until chives are bright green or half-cooked, or fully cooked as preferred. Splash 1 T shao xin wine or rice wine over the chives, stir and remove onto a plate. All at medium high heat.



2. In the same wok, add 2 T veg oil, coat the surface of the wok up to halfway. Add the beef and use your frying ladle to spread the beef into a single layer. Let it fry at high heat without stirring for about 1/2 minute. Now use your ladle to turn the beef over and let it cook another 30-40 seconds without stirring. Too much stirring toughens the beef. Now the beef should have turned mostly pale instead of red. Use your ladle and stir the beef to mix well and add about 2 T water or stock, then either a) add the fried chives to mix & fry a couple more seconds (high heat) and remove onto a plate or b) arrange the beef on top of the fried chives.