Beef and Vegetable Rolls

Voila, the recipe from Harumi’s Japanese Cooking.

Ingredients (serves 4):

200g fresh green asparagus

70-80g green beans

360g thinly sliced beef (I used shabu shabu, which my wonderful husband got for very very cheap at QB Foods – they’re the guys who supply the Cold Storage chain)

Sauce for the beef

4 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp sake

2 tbsp sesame oil

2 tbsp caster sugar

2 tbsp red wine

3 tbsp ground sesame seeds (I had neither the time nor will to grind my sesame seeds so I just used 1.5 tbsp sesame sauce instead)

2 tsp finely crushed garlic

1 tsp fresh grated ginger (I skipped this too cos I didn’t have any at home)

Black pepper

Chili pepper (Ichimi Togarashi)

Directions (I’ve modified some of them):

1. Put sauce ingredients into a bowl and mix well, making sure the sugar dissolves. Leave to mature for 2-3 hours (I didn’t know I needed to start that early so my sauce was only allowed to mature for 1.5 hours).

2. Cut off the woody base and side leaves of the asparagus. Top and tail the green beans. Cook the vegetables briefly in boiling water so they are still firm to the bite. Drain. Plunge into chilled water and drain again. (You’ll want to cook the asparagus for about 1.5 minutes, and the beans for about 1 minute). Cut vegetables into 3-4 inch pieces.

3. Put the beef strips into the sauce and mix well by hand.

4. Spread the beef slices out on a plate. Place a spear of asparagus and some green beans at the top of each slice, then roll the beef around the vegetables like so:

5. Grill or pan fry the rolls. As the beef is thin, the rolls cook very quickly. (You can put toothpicks through the rolls to secure them but I didn’t see the need.)

6. Carefully cut the rolls into bite size pieces and place on a serving plate. Pour on the remaining sauce if you so wish (I didn’t). Ta da! A delightfully pretty dish that is sure to impress.