This stir-fry of beef with bamboo shoots & peppers was inspired by a favorite dish we used to eat at a restaurant that we frequented a lot as a family in my childhood.It’s savory, tasty, and quick to make—delicious with rice or pao fan (porridge).Remembering That Restaurant In our never-ending hunt for hidden-gem Chinese restaurants that specialize in regional cuisines, we’ve had several favorites over the years, including a Shanghainese restaurant on Route 46 in Jersey (long since closed) incongruously named, “Hunan Cottage.”  It wasn’t until I fully understood the nuances of Chinese regional cooking that I questioned why the restaurant was labeled, “Hunan,” a province whose spicy, chili-laden cuisine couldn’t be more different from the sweet and otherwise mild character of the Shanghainese specialties that constituted 99% of their menu.

This stir-fried beef with peppers and bamboo shoots was perhaps their one dish that could claim to be in the style of Hunan cooking.It was delicious enough to warrant the “Hunan” label on its own!  When we all declared that this recipe took us back to “the Cottage,” as we called it, we knew we’d gotten it right.  On Bamboo Shoots In this recipe, I’m using canned julienned bamboo shoots, which you can find in Chinese grocery stores.If all you can find are the canned bamboo shoots that are in the shapes of little rectangles, those will work too! You can just stack them a few high and julienne them to g

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