Wk9 -- Chinese Spiced Beef

This week I made Chinese Spiced Beef.

The recipe source is http://www.thehongkongcookery.com/2013/07/chinese-spiced-beef-shin.html

Ingredients:
2 large pieces of beef
1 piece dried tangerine peel
5 pieces star anise
3 of cinnamon sticks
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2-3 big slices of ginger
2 tsp fennel
1/3 cup Shao Shing Rice Wine
1/2 cup dark soy sauce
1/2 cup rock sugar

Steps to make it:
1. Blanch the beef in boiling water for 1 minute.
2. Pour out water and add enough fresh water to cover the beef when added. Add all other ingredients and bring to a boil.
3. Boil at medium for 1 hour, lower heat to shimmer and cook for another 1 to 1 1/2 hour until tender. Let cool.
4. Separate beef from liquid and store both separately in refrigerator. The beef needs to be cold in order to cut properly in thin slices.
5. When ready to serve slice the beef shins thinly, arranging nicely on a plate. Spoon out appropriate amount of sauce.

The Chinese Spiced Beef is presented as one dish out of many at a Chinese family style meal. My mom's always making for us. It is a slow cooked flavored of beef with Chinese spices that becomes deliciously tender and fragrant with beautiful stripes of translucent melty tendons patterning the sliced beef. The beef require a long long time to cook down but its well worth it to end up with the resulting amazingly melty and contrasting texture and the wonderful beefy flavor. This is the small fire simmer of traditional Chinese food culture. This time I also added some eggs in it and served them with rice.

How I incorporated the weekly technique:

When I make this dish, I need to cut the cooled beef in slices. I learned how to use knives to cut it into slices. The technique of slicing is that using a sawing motion when slicing through foods, don't push up and down. Keep the tip of the knife on the surface of the cutting board and lift the handle up and down with a repetitive front-to-back sawing motion.