Published July 1, 2005.
For a sophisticated Thai beef recipe using available ingredients and requiring minimal cooking time, we turned to inexpensive blade steak, which offers tenderness and beefy flavor. With a marinade made of fish sauce, white pepper, citrusy coriander, and a little light brown sugar, the beef needed to marinate for only 15 minutes to develop full flavor. To add heat to our stir-fried Thai beef recipe, we introduced an easily controlled heat source—Asian chili-garlic paste—that also added toasty garlicky flavors along with heat.
If you cannot find blade steaks, use flank steak; because flank steak requires less trimming, you will need only about 1 3/4 pounds. To cut a flank steak into the proper-sized slices for stir-frying, first cut the steak with the grain into 1 1/2-inch strips, then cut the strips against the grain into 1/4-inch-thick slices. White pepper lends this stir-fry a unique flavor; black pepper is not a good substitute. Serve the stir-fry with steamed jasmine rice.
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