cute kitchen

Mia has been away in Barcelona for the past two weeks and I knew she’d be starving for a good meal when she returned home! I spent awhile thinking about what she might have missed in particular and decided that a good combination of two of her favourite ingredients (oranges and beef fillet) might be the safest way to go.

I wanted to keep it simple, something like a stir fry but with a good sauce to drench the rice in, since Mia is not really a big fan of rice on the whole. Plus the steamed broccoli on the side would no doubtedly enjoy being mopped around in the sticky orange sauce so there was nothing more to consider: dinner was set.

I’ve used simple ingredients here and have omitted the chilli, which I added to our meal, in order to make it more palatable for bigger crowds or children who might not appreciate spice as much as mine do. If you do like chilli, thinly slice rings of a nice red chilli and toss them in with the sauce.

Regarding the sauce: I don’t cook it down all that much, as I find there can never be too much sauce! Just let it reduce until it thickens to your liking or coats the back of a spoon. I find this dish likes lots of pepper but go easy on the salt as there’s already a good amount of saltiness from the soy sauce 🙃.

Ingredients (will feed 3 well)

1 organic orange (finely zested and then juiced – the juice is for the sauce)

400g beef fillet (cut into strips of about 1.5cm and then left for about 30 minutes to come to room temperature, if possible)

2 small or 1 large carrot, julienned

A chunky piece of ginger (abpit 3cm x 2cm)

3 small garlic cloves, very thinly sliced

1 red pepper, thinly sliced

1 bunch of spring onions, very thinly sliced

300g basmati rice, rinse in a sieve until the water runs clear

1 head of broccoli, cut into bite size florets

4 Tbsp olive oil

For the sauce (stir them all together in a jug and keep to the side until needed):

80ml rice wine vinegar

50g brown sugar

80ml water

60ml soy sauce

2 tsp. cornflour

Juice from the orange you zested

The cutting takes up most of the time in this recipe so I suggest that you do all your prep first!

For the meat:

• Place 2 Tbsp of oil in a non stick frying pan and heat until hot. Tip in the meat and fry until seared. Remove to a bowl.

• Place another 2 Tbsp of oil in the same pan (on a high heat) and add your carrots, red pepper, ginger and garlic. Fry for a couple of minutes, then add your fried meat plus all of its juices back into the pan.

• Now add your sauce ingredients (that you have nicely mixed together in a jug) to the meat mix. Add the orange zest and give everything a good stir.

• Allow the sauce to thicken while you get the rice going (continue to stir regularly and as soon as the sauce has a thicker consistency, remove the pan from the heat).

For the rice and broccoli:

• Boil 600ml of water in a saucepan with a pinch of salt. Once the water is boiling, add the rice. Place the lid on, turn the heat right down and cook for 10 minutes.

• Get another pan on the stove with about 10cm of water. Boil the water, add the broccoli, put the lid on and let it steam for about 5 minutes (until cooked but still crunchy!). Drain and place on the table to be served.

• Back to the rice: After 10 minutes, keep the lid on the pot but turn the heat off. Set a timer for another 10 minutes. Once the timer goes off, you can remove the lid from the pot and the rice is ready to be served.

• Add your spring onions to the meat mixture and serve straight away with the rice and broccoli. Delicious!!