On Saturdays, when Vilis and I shop for groceries, we make a point of buying something new – fresh figs, dragonfruit, Tim Tams, paté with port, wine-infused fig and almond cheese dip, and so on. One Saturday, I picked out a bottle of Outback Spirit Wild Lime Ginger & Chillie Sauce, which is subtitled ‘Real Australian Sauce’ and, according to the label, is made using small, ‘intensely-flavoured’ wild limes from Queensland’s outback. “Okay,” Vilis said, “but what do we do with it?”
The label said to use it with fish, duck, prawns, or as a dip for finger foods. I decided to employ it as a marinade, and today, we ate the best beef and stir-fried veggie supper I’ve ever cooked. So, here’s the recipe, which I’ve titled ‘A Saucy Taste of Australia.’
This is how it goes. Buy a packet of stir-frying beef cut in small strips. Put the beef in a bowl and pour Outback Spirit Wild Lime Ginger & Chilli sauce over the meat, stirring and adding sauce until every strip of meat is well-covered. Then marinate the beef in the fridge for four hours.
As mealtime approaches, thinly slice a 6-inch zucchini, chop an big onion into large chunks, cut a red pepper or capsicum into half-inch strips and then into squares, and slice a handful of green string beans into inch-long pieces. Put all the veggie bits into a bowl and set it somewhere safe to await cooking.
Remove the marinated beef from the fridge and spoon it, along with the sauce, into a hot pan. Fry at a medium-hot heat for a couple minutes, and then turn the heat down to its lowest setting and cook the beef for a few more minutes. It will be amazingly tender. Pour the cooked beef into a serving bowl, cover with a lid, and keep warm.
Next, wash the frying pan if you only have one, like we do, or choose a clean pan. Pour a quarter or 20-cent-piece sized puddle of light olive oil into the pan and heat it to medium-hot. Empty the bowl of chopped and sliced veggies into the pan and stir-fry them until the onion is just clear and the zucchini soft. The red pepper will still have some body in it, and the green beans will be tender-crisp. You might need to add a tich of water while cooking, if the veggies start sticking to the pan.
To best appreciate the flavours, serve the beef and veggies in separate bowls rather than mixing them together. We opened our meal with a salad of iceberg lettuce tossed with pieces of apple and orange (no dressing) and aided and abetted by slices of watermelon. Then we tucked into the beef and veggies. The flavour was marvellous, with that veggie combination complementing the tenderized beef and spicy-fruity meat sauce perfectly. We topped off the meal with more watermelon and a slice of carrot loaf.
Note: If you can’t find Outback Spirit Wild Lime Ginger & Chilli Sauce in your shopping explorations, you may be able to approximate it. The list of ingredients on the bottle reads as follows: Cane sugar, water, wild limes (10%), chilli, ginger (2%), modified maize starch, salt, pepper, garlic. Enjoy!
