Adam Liaw's mince with oyster sauce, and chinese cabbage with chilli, garlic and vinegar
A few years ago, I had a recipe in this magazine for salt and vinegar potatoes. It had just four ingredients – salt, vinegar, oil and potatoes – and involved boiling the potatoes in water with a cup of vinegar, then roasting them in oil until crisp.
It’s a great dish, one I find myself coming back to regularly, but I wasn’t prepared for some of the feedback I got. There were quite a few people who complained that it was too easy. One person said I may as well have published a recipe for toast. Of course, none of the people who complained had actually cooked the dish. And those who had, loved it.
Mince with oyster sauce.Credit:William Meppem. Styling by Hannah Meppem.
It ended up being Good Food’s third-most popular recipe for the whole year. There’s nothing wrong with easy recipes. And there’s no such thing as a recipe that’s “too simple”. Simple food that saves time and money while still producing tasty meals should be a goal for any home cook. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it because it’s true: there’s no correlation between how difficult a dish is to cook and how good it tastes.
Mince with oyster sauce
Serves 4
There’s nothing special about the ingredients here, but that just illustrates how a slight change of technique can bring the best out of even the simplest things.
- 2 tbsp canola oil
- 4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
- 500g pork or beef mince
- 3 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tsp sugar
- ¼ tsp salt
Place a medium saucepan over low-medium heat and add the oil and garlic. Cook the garlic, swirling the pan regularly, until it’s golden brown. Increase the heat to medium-high and add the mince. Fry the mince until it starts to release its juices, then add the oyster sauce, sugar and salt. Continue to fry the mince for about 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has evaporated and
the mince starts to fry again.
If you want to add a chopped vegetable such as onion or capsicum, you can stir it through at this point. Otherwise, just serve with rice and a vegetable side dish.
Chinese cabbage with chilli, garlic and vinegar.Credit:William Meooem. Styling by Hannah Meppem.
Chinese cabbage with chilli, garlic and vinegar
Serves 4, as part of a shared meal
This straightforward vegetable dish is ready in five minutes. Use plenty of oil to both help with the frying process and carry the flavour around the cabbage.
- 2 tbsp canola oil
- 2 dried chillies, cut into 1cm lengths
- 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
- ¼ Chinese cabbage, cut into 5cm pieces
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp black vinegar or rice vinegar
- 1 tsp sugar
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 tsp cornflour mixed with 2 tbsp cold water
Heat a wok over high heat and add the oil, dried chillies and garlic, then toss for a few seconds. Add the Chinese cabbage and toss to coat in the oil. Toss the cabbage in the wok for a minute or two to fry, then cover the wok with a lid for a further minute to soften the cabbage, then add the soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and salt and toss to coat. Cook for a further two minutes, then drizzle in the cornflour mixture until any liquid in the wok thickens and coats the cabbage.
Adam’s tip: Firm vegetables with a high water content such as cabbage will fry when they first hit the wok. But once they start to release liquid, the temperature of the wok will drop. Use a wok lid to trap steam and thus soften the vegetables.
This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale August 2.