Leftovers for lunch

I haven't been doing much cooking lately - mostly I throw together a salad when dinner time rolls around, which is fine, but doesn't make for much in the way of leftovers, and I've always been in the habit of taking leftovers to work for lunch. Result: I've been buying lunch far too often.


It even got to the point where I'd actually written "make something for dinner which will have leftovers" on Sunday's 'to do' list. Of course, since I didn't actually refer to the list during the day, merely checking it that night to see how much I could cross off, nothing ever got made.

Finally, I got out my Edmonds book at work yesterday, selected a fairly easy-looking recipe - ginger beef stir-fry (p149), and headed to Pak N Save on my way home to pick up the ingredients.


This stir fry uses skirt steak, a cut I haven't bought before, but actually seems ideal for stir-frying. It's a cheaper cut, and you'll find that the pack recommends slow cooking, but since you're slicing it thinly across the grain, it really does not have the chewiness that you'd expect from a cheap cut of meat.


Those thin strips of skirt steak go in a bowl to marinate in a little oil, soy sauce and grated ginger. This takes about half an hour, during which I chopped up my peppers and spring onions, and stirred together a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, cornflour, sugar and beef stock to make a sauce.

I admit I skimped on the marinating time a bit - I was hungry, so I only gave it about 20 minutes before pulling the meat out of the fridge, and stir-frying it in two batches. Setting the meat aside, I added my veges to the pan, and briefly stir-fried those before pouring in my sauce mixture. After a minute or two, the sauce began to thicken, so I added the meat back in, stirred it through, and the stir-fry was done.


The recipe doesn't include rice or noodles, but I cooked up some egg noodles and added those as well.  So with very little time or effort, I now had a decent meal on my hands, and - importantly - more than enough to provide me with leftovers for lunch.


Stir-fries are a basic component of most people's cooking repertoires these days - with good reason. They're quick and easy, and you can stretch a small amount of meat quite a long way by slicing it thinly. I admit I have never been good at just throwing them together, though, and this recipe would be useful for those like me who prefer to use something as a guide.

It's a pretty good stir-fry: the meat is beautifully tender, and the sauce has just the right quantity and consistency to coat the veges (and my added noodles) without actually drowning everything. I'll be making this one again.