Beef with Kon-nyaku and Vegetable “Kimpira” Stir-fry 牛肉と蒟蒻の金平

We were having some very extremely cold and snowy weather recently. One of the best dishes for this kind of cold weather is sukiyaki すき焼きand similar nabe 鍋 dishes. We recently got thinly sliced (2mm in thickness) beef rib eye for sukiyaki from Weee. This is not top quality beef but it is very reasonably  priced and quite good. So, one very cold evening, we cooked sukiyaki at the table and had it with hot sake 燗酒.  The package included 1lb of beef, which was more than we could eat in one sitting so besides the leftover sukiyaki, we had leftover uncooked beef as well. Thinly sliced beef is used in many Japanese dishes but we usually do not have beef (we usually have chicken or pork and occasionally lamb) so I did not have a favorite “go-to” recipe to use the beef.  I looked through some beef recipes on the web but ended up with my own variation (picture #1). We had a cake of kon-nyaku (konjac) 蒟蒻, and an end piece of daikon 大根. So I included those in this dish. Many Japanese dishes call for small Japanese green pepper called “pea-man” ピーマンwhich is quite different from American green pepper. Instead I used, seeded and deveined Jalapeño pepper.  For the seasonings, I added “Douban-jang”. 豆板醤 to add slight heat. For an impromptu dish, everything came together rather nicely. This is a just note to myself so that I can recreate it in the future.

Ingredients:
150gram thinly sliced beef, cut into thin strips (picture below, this was rib eye) (picture #2)
One cake  of kon-nyaku 板コンニャク, washed, par-boiled
One small carrot
2 inch of daikon
One large Jalapeño pepper, seeded and deveined
1 tbs vegetable oil and 1 tsp dark sesame oil

Seasonings:
1 tsp douban-jang (or more if you like spicy)
2 tbs sake
1 tbs mirin
2 tbs soy sauce (I used x4 Japanese noodle sauce)

Directions:
I tried to cut all the vegetables in the same, thin rectangular pieces. I halved the  kon-nyaku cake in thickness, added shallow criss-cross cuts on both sides and cut into the similar rectangular shape but some came out a bit thicker and larger. (Picture #3 from left to right are kon-nyaku, carrot, Jalapeño pepper and diakon).

I added the oil in a non-stick frying pan on medium flame (vegetable plus sesame oil). I added the beef and cooked until almost done and added the remaining vegetables and the kon-nyaku and stir fried for 2-3 minutes.

I added the sake, mirin, and soy sauce. When coming to the boil I added douban-jang (picture #4) and mixed well. Placed the lid on and let it simmer for 5-7 minutes.

I removed the lid and turned the flame to medium high and stirred until the liquid was almost gone. I tasted and adjusted the seasoning. In this case, it came out slightly sweeter than I intended but it had a nice sweet and salty flavor and a mild spicy kick. Certainly, the beef added more flavor. I could have cut the daikon into thicker pieces since it became very soft. The kon-nyaku absorbed the seasonings and added nice texture. We like this dish. It will go with rice or drinks. In our case, probably the latter.