Coconut Rice & Beef Stir-Fry

My dear friends...this is one of my favorites. I found it in a Cooking Light magazine several years ago (Yay!!! Cooking Light!!!) (we don't cook full fat stuff all the time. Just 90% of the time...haha!) Let's begin.

For the rice:

1 cup water
1/4 tsp salt
Dash ground red pepper
14 oz can regular or light coconut milk
1 cup uncooked jasmine or sticky rice

For the Stir-fry:

1 tsp dark sesame oil
1 lb flank steak, sliced thin against the grain
1 c vertically sliced onion
1 c red bell pepper strips
3 c sliced bok choy
2 T chopped fresh cilantro
1 T chili garlic sauce (such as Lee Kum Kee)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
Lime wedges

To cook the rice, combine the water, coconut milk, salt and red pepper. Bring to a boil. Add the rice, turn down the heat, cover and simmer about 20 minutes or until done.

This is not a difficult recipe. The hardest part is just the prep-work, and that's not all hard. Let's start with bok choy. I hadn't ever purchased, let alone used, bok choy before I found this recipe. I spent several minutes in the produce at the grocery store, trying to locate it, having no idea what I was looking for. I would love to make this easier for anyone else in the same boat. Here is a photo of bok choy. Don't you love how Brian got it to stand up for the picture?

After washing the leaves, I split them up the middle first.

Then I cut it into thin strips.

One of the things I immediately loved about bok choy is that it's like having two kinds of veggies in your dish. The leaves cook down, similar to fresh spinach. The stem remains crispy and fresh.

Flank steak is a relatively inexpensive cut of meat. There are a lot of different things you can do with it. The recipe calls for 1 lb, but I shoot for more like 1 1/2 lbs. Flank steak usually comes from the store rolled or folded into thirds. Just unfold it and lay it out on your cutting surface. I like to have somewhat smaller pieces of meat in the finished dish, so I split the flank steak up the middle and then slice it as thinly as possible against the grain. Don't get in a hurry and then cut it too thick.

Then you can cut your onion and pepper into strips and chop up the fresh cilantro to your desired size. I decided to use yellow and red pepper, just to zip up the color a little.

Heat your sesame oil in a large pot, on med-high to high heat. Add the flank steak and cook it until done. Remove the meat, cover with foil and keep it warm. In the hot pan, add the onion and pepper. Stir fry for about 5 minutes. Add the bok choy and cook for another 3 minutes.

Return the meat to the pan, along with the cilantro, the chili garlic sauce, salt and pepper. (You can use more of the chili garlic sauce, if you would like it to have a good kick.) Cook two minutes or until thoroughly heated.

Serve the stir-fry with the coconut rice and the lime wedges. We were very surprised and pleased with the lime. Squeeze it over the top. It adds just the right finishing touch. In fact, you might find yourself adding more. Tonight, we also had some potstickers on the side.