How to Make Chinese Tangerine Beef

Okay, we're good.

Okay, we're rolling. Hi everyone, here we are, another edition of Around the Kitchen Table with myself and Chef Dennis Littley. Hi Dennis, how's it going?

It is wonderful. It's beautiful here today. Cloud— it keeps getting cloudy every now and then, but then the sun will break through. But it's the weather in terms of temperature and a delicious breeze is just Perfect.

Yeah, well, we have 60s up here on Long Island.

Yeah, it was 50, it was almost 60 when we left Ocean City on Monday.

Oh wow, that's great. Yeah, I know. And so we're really, you know, have spring fever. We have people working outside and, you know, we're all ready to go.

So, oh yeah, definitely springtime here. It's just beautiful. So this is the kind of weather we live for. And a lot of times in Florida, or not a lot of times, we've been here, this is our third Third winter. The first year, it was just glorious from the time we moved here all year round. Last year was a little cold. This winter, we had winter, if you wanna say so.

Yes, I know you did. And ours was mild. So for those of you who haven't been here before or didn't know, Chef Dennis Littley is a very accomplished chef. And what we do is we sort of have a holistic attitude about the kitchen cooking. And kitchen design. I am Susan Serra, a kitchen designer for many, many years. And Chef's emphasis is to give you restaurant quality meals and, you know, and making them easy, making them easy, approachable, but you know what? Mostly adaptable. So that is our philosophy.

Yeah, you don't want to be afraid in the kitchen. And, you know, it's not mystical, it's not magical, it's not rocket science. It's about combining flavors that you enjoy and learning a few basic techniques along the way that'll make your life a lot easier in the kitchen. So that's what I try to show you. And lately I have been exploring Asian cuisine. I'm not— definitely not a master at it, but I've learned to make some things. And again, the whole idea is to get you into the kitchen to spend some quality time with people in the kitchen and to have fun creating new dishes. So a lot of times I'll be making them for the first time right along with you while you're watching. But this is something I have made before and it was delicious. So I wanted to make it again and share it.

Well, I mean, you're combining tangerines and noodles. So we have sweetness. We have, you know, the texture of noodles. It sounds terrific.

Well, actually there's no noodles in this one today.

Oh, okay. I thought I saw that.

Originally there were and I changed up how I was making it. So this is just— this, you could serve this very easily with some nice lo mein noodles or glass noodles. But this is going to be just with— I have some rice on and actually I made the rice because I'm going to make some fried rice to go with this for dinner. But the first time we had it, I just served it over plain jasmine rice and it was really good.

Oh, I bet. Okay, so let's do it.

Do you have a conversion? Peggy has a question. Okay. It's a good question. And she wants to know if we have any kind of conversion chart for substituting ingredients you don't have. And I do not, Peggy. That's, that's a really good question. And I think yours was gluten-free, wasn't it? Is that what you were asking about? If memory serves me correct. Most of the time in all of my recipes like this that call for flour, not necessarily. Okay, it would depend on what it was. You know, I can't— it's difficult to make adjustments for things when I don't eat them. Like, I am not a low glycemic or a diabetic, so I don't cook that way, and giving advice towards that just doesn't— I wouldn't want to be inaccurate. With gluten-free things, a lot of the recipes are easy, and I was talking to a gluten-free friend, simply by making the flour switch, there's a lot of good gluten-free flours out there, but to make them specifically, you know, you can always interchange the proteins or leave the proteins out if you're a vegan or vegetarian, you know, you pretty much know what you need to do to make the dish that way, but you can always switch out vegetables, that's part of the beauty of recipes as if you use them as guides and to add in what you like and take out what you don't like. Yeah, I don't have to eat gluten-free either, but I try to sometimes. A lot of the problems with eating gluten-free is that a lot of— they'll put extra sugars in them to make up for the lack of gluten. So where people think they're getting a really good thing and they're going to be helpful to lose weight, it's not always the case.

Oh, that's really interesting. I never had— as far as I know, Personally, I never had a problem with gluten.

Well, you know, we do eat too much gluten. I did. And I think that's what drove my intolerance for it. I don't think I am— I have celiac or anything like that. I was eating gluten 3 times a day because it's delicious. But so I have cut back on gluten. You know, I've cut back seriously on dairy. You know, I've cut back. And there's a lot of things I think if we just eat too much of them, they set off these sensitivities. I've cut back on beef. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Beef is not for me. Like, we were in Ocean City and I wanted to get a cheesesteak. I went back to chicken cheesesteaks.

You know why?

Because I like them. Yeah.

You know, they're good.

I had no problem with that. But in something like this, because it was a recipe, had beef in it. You know, if we eat beef or if I eat beef once every 2 months, that's probably a lot now.

Yeah, that's, that's kind of what we're doing, too. And I don't miss it.

Yeah. More fish, definitely more fish, you know, chicken. I, you know, I always— but beef is kind of not— has been as prominent on the table. Same with pork. Pork is not as prominent on the table as it used to be. But, you know, if we want it, we have it. So that's it.

Yeah.

So let's get to— let's get going then. It's a very simple— things to understand about making Asian foods, as I have come to understand, is simply in the sauces. And once you understand how the sauces are made and the in— in constric— well, the complexity, I can't say in— I can't say that word. Anyway, the complexity of the sauces, it's not difficult and you don't need a lot of ingredients. I think the first thing I made a few weeks back, I bought a lot of different things anticipating making them, and I've really used the same basic ones, soy sauce, sesame oil. I think that's all. Oh, and mirin.

Yes, yes, fish sauce. I have fish sauce. I haven't used it yet. I don't know what to do with it.

I have different things. So I don't think it's really as important as, you know, as buying a wide variety, you know, but I have them now, so I need to try and make some more things with them. But this is really simple. One of the things you'll find with Asian-inspired dishes lots of times is the meats are marinated because they use really inexpensive cuts of meats for the most part. We're going to do— it's, uh, I actually bought skirt steak. It's really flank steak, same name, different kind of steak. I, you know, I'm not a butcher, so there may be a little bit more difference to it, but, uh, it's inexpensive cut of meat, and that's what we're going to use today. But first thing we're going to do is we're going to make marinade. And let me cut for the marinade. I need some garlic.

And let me know if you have any noisy parts because I have a little slideshow on hardware.

Well, when I start cooking the beef is when you can do your little slideshow.

Okay, good.

Other than that, and it's really pretty quick. It's amazing how quick these are to make. Really, the only part of it is the marinades, like when you're marinating them. And that can be done, you know, the day before. You could actually make the marinade and then add it to the meat like if you're in the morning before you go to work, if you don't want it to marinate too long, you know, and over-marinating some of these isn't always a good idea. So I'm just going to chop this garlic up. Another piece of garlic. Oh, here it is. I have such a jumble of ingredients on the table here. And really, to peel it, I wasn't hitting it too hard because I had that bowl just with the heel of your hand on the garlic. I've also seen people peel garlic in like a small can. They just shake it. I tried that, didn't work for me.

But I have a favorite method for garlic, and that's I have a little hammer thing, which is a meat pounder, and it's very— it's probably only this big, very small. I just give it one whack and that's it. The whole peel comes off.

Yep. You hit it right, it will. So we've got—

except for the little pieces that may fly off, but we won't talk about that.

And then I'm going to put some orange or some tangerine rind in it. And one of the things you want to understand about citrus is the pith. And this is this white stuff. In tangerines, there is almost none, and there's not a lot to scrape out. But if I was candying these, which sometimes you'll see in recipe, I would scrape them down really good to get all this white off because that's where the bitterness comes in. And you really just want the oils. So in, in this marinade, I'm not worrying about it as much, but if I was going to make candied to add into the dish, I would scrape them down. So I'm going to add this to the marinade, and it really doesn't have to be too fine because we're going to shake it off before we cook it. I want to get the oils, and the oils are what's in the peel, and the oils is where you get that fragrance and that flavor from.

You know, it makes me wonder, we've had so many oranges this winter, you know, as part of my CSA. It makes me wonder if I should, when I peel the orange, freeze the peel and then do something with it later.

I don't know. I mean, again, I would scrape them down if you were going to freeze it. And unless you were making your own extract or if you wanna flavor vodka, but you wanna make sure that you don't have any of that white part if you're adding it to it, because it's gonna make it bitter. It's not, you know, it's just like when you make limoncello, you have to be sure you're just zesting. Like if you're zesting it, you wanna zest the top part. You don't wanna get into the white. So it's careful of how you're taking it off because the oils in it are fabulous. They're just wonderful. I mean, you could probably—

I know, that's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm thinking, yeah.

You could probably put that in creams and moisturizing cream, different things too, just to let the oils leach out of it. But I'm sure there's some other uses for it. But good question. Okay, so now I have garlic, I have some tangerine zest, some crushed red pepper, some cornstarch. And there is a link if you go up to the top for the recipe. And I do have this on my blog so you can see it. Okay, then we're going to put in soy sauce, and I use a light soy sauce just to cut back on the sugar a little bit. This is mirin rice wine, and you could use regular wine if you didn't have it. And tangerine juice, and they were a quarter cup of each.

Now, did the tangerine juice come from a bottle or the Okay, but now let me ask you, um, you know, who wants to go out and get tangerine juice? So can, can you just like grab an orange, or will it be a different—

okay, and then squeeze it. Orange will work. You know, it's— I use tangerine because I, I love, absolutely love Noble Juice, and I found out that all tangerine juices aren't created equal. And the problem is that they use different kinds of tangerines and they're not balanced, just like orange juice. Sometimes you get an orange juice at the store and it's like the best orange juice you've had.

I know, so sweet.

So you rush back and you buy more of it and you go, "Huh, was I not thinking right? This is not very good this time." It's okay, but it's not that best orange juice. So with Noble, they really are careful about blending them. They grow their own tangerines. It's Florida grown. Florida Bottled, run by 4th generation or 5th generation Floridians in Winter Haven, Florida. And they get— I went to their operation. They get the different kinds of tangerines, they process them, and they don't process them for maximum juice. They process them to get as much juice as they can before they make the flavor bitter or before they make the—

okay, okay. You know, I haven't heard of the brand. I wonder if they're up in the Northeast.

I have seen them in Super Fresh and in Acme. It's not something unless you go over to that juice section in the produce area, you don't always find them. It's more of a specialty juice.

It also may— maybe you can— I mean, on Amazon, sometimes you can get pantry items delivered.

I'm not sure if they sell on Amazon, but anyway, it's a great juice. They actually gave me some coupons that were good up to a gallon. And, you know, they don't sell gallons in Florida. That's the— that's the biggest bottle they sell. And I'm going, really? I got a coupon. That's good. Oh my gosh, I gotta buy quarts with it. Yeah, it was really good juice. So anyway, this is the marinade and it's that simple. So that's all I'm going to do. I'm going to set this aside for a minute and then I'm going to work on the beef. All right, now this again, I went to buy flank steak and they didn't have flank steak, they had skirt steak. And again, there may be a little difference in it. I'm not positive, but it looks pretty much the same. This actually looks better than what I bought before.

I think it looks great.

Yeah, I thought so. The one I bought before did not look as nice. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to take some of this membrane off of it, off the back, because a lot of times it's not the fat. If it was just fat, I really wouldn't care because fat has flavor. But sometimes— and this one isn't as bad as the first one I did. It had a much thicker membrane on it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get underneath of it with a knife, and I'm just going to let— pull it up a little bit, kind of let gravity, or lack of gravity, help me and take it that way. Now here, if I can get underneath this, this is a membrane here, because this is what's going to make it tough. It's not essential that you But this is going to be hard to chew. So this is why, if you can get some of it off, want to get some of it off.

I've had a skirt steak in my freezer from a butcher for like a month. I think I have to make this tomorrow night.

This is— this, I'm telling you, this is excellent. This was one of those things I made where it even surprised me how good it was. And when that happens, that's a good thing. Yeah, I mean, I expect them to be good, but when I go, oh my God, this is really good. So, you know, this takes a little time. This can be done ahead of time, and I could probably do it a little faster.

Well, let me ask you, let me ask you, that membrane thing that we're seeing, that cloudy light pink color that we're seeing, does that kind of hold it all together? So On the cow it does. Yeah, but I mean, even in, even in the meat, like, if with that gone, does the meat stretch more? Is it more naturally, you know what I mean? Or am I overthinking?

I don't think it's overthinking. It's just thinking of the possibilities. It's not really holding it together when you cook it. It's just part of the natural organic structure of the animal, just like we have tendons and things holding our body together. It's the same thing. So here, I mean, you can see it's mostly just meat. I like to say I don't mind these little pieces of fat because they're going to add flavor. So the other thing to do— this is really a nice pretty piece of meat. This is, it is, this is going to eat well. So I'm going to cut it against the grain. So when you're cutting, yeah, you know, I'm, I could— I'm not going to cut it in strips this way, which would be the way you might think to do it. Yeah. It looks like it. So instead, I'm going to cut these in smaller pieces this way, and I'm going to cut it just like I would be slicing, right? I'm slicing roast beef. I'm slicing London broil. I'm going to slice it this way because what happens is when you break it down this way, it's easier to chew.

Wow. That's mind-blowing.

This is why, you know, if it's cut wrong, same piece of meat can be very difficult to chew. So you wanna go, you wanna help your teeth out and you wanna go against the grain.

I can't believe it. This is like life-changing.

So this is—

I always assumed to cut every piece of meat I've worked with along the grain.

No, against the grain. And see, and you can even see it looks more like it has that steak kind of look to it this way too.

Wow.

So there's that. Again, this is a little too big for what I'm making. This is great for fajitas. This is great for just any kind of stir-fry. They don't have to be perfect. I want them to be a little small, but they don't have to be quite that small. If you want to make them a little thicker, you can. I guess it's okay, but I'm going to really quick cook them. They don't have to be too bad. This is a little long, but it'll be okay. So now I have all this meat. Now if I wanted to make, like, say, a beef fried rice or more of a stir-fry, I could very easily just chop these up, make them smaller pieces. But this is kind of nice because, you know, you have teeth, you want to see what you're eating, you want to— you can always cut it up. So unless it's, like I said, unless I was putting in a rice, I probably would not cut it up. So that's all you need to do to the beef. All right, and this can be done ahead of time.

Well, that's easy. It's easy and it makes sense. And wow, what a big new tip I learned.

So all I'm going to do at this point is get myself a Ziploc bag. I'm going to put the meat into it. Like that. And then here's my marinade. And the marinade would just pour into the bag. And actually, I'm not going to do it with this. I have one that's all set to go. I'm going to make something different with this. We'll see how that comes out and it'll be a new flavor for us to try. But you would just put it in, get as much of the air out of it as you can.

And the question is, did you have to— you didn't have to pound the meat before you cut it?

No. Okay. It's pretty flat as it is. And actually I could feel that's gonna be, that's a pretty tender piece of flank steak. 'Cause you know, you can tell when you feel it, how the meat feels. And it's something you're gonna wanna cook fairly quickly because, and just enough because that's gonna make it a little tougher too. So you wanna keep that in mind when you're cooking. So here we have that. So here's, this is what I did. I put it in the refrigerator. All right, it's just all mixed in there with everything. So that's good to go. So that was in there. I did it this morning at 8 o'clock, and it only needs to marinate for 2 to 4 hours. It can marinate overnight. The problem with marinating with citrus sometimes too is it tends to cook it. So letting it marinate too long would not necessarily be a good thing.

Mm-hmm. Like a ceviche.

Yes. Yeah, really, honestly. So 2 to 4 hours is all you want to give it to something like that. So this is done. We're just going to set it aside for now. Quickly, I'll show you what we're going to do with it. Well, I'm going to get a strainer because I'm going to do it that way. Discard the marinade. Now it's touched the meat. It's not something you want to save to use for a sauce. Dump that in my strainer and get as much of the liquid off of it as you can. Grab a plate.

Oh, that is good to know. 2 to 4 hours. Yeah, yeah, that's not that long.

Really isn't. So, and you know, you could marinate it and then actually probably take it out of it. But I wouldn't marinate it too, too long. So here's the beef. The smell is just wonderful because I smell garlic.

Oh yeah.

And I smell— I didn't put it in, in the marinade. There's a little bit of sesame oil that goes in that too. I did not put that in.

Nice.

I will put that in. And that's what I smell is the sesame oil. And again, it's just really permeating, giving it some flavor. So this is all, and all I'm going to do now is I'm going to take some cornstarch, plain old cornstarch. And while I'm doing that, let me heat up my pan. Get that ready to cook.

So why cornstarch rather than flour?

Because it's going to make the sauce, it's going to give it a different kind of a crust. Asians really don't use flour as much. Most of their recipes will have cornstarch. It's going to give it a little bit of a different crust, a little exterior. I have friends that will do their wings in cornstarch rather than flour because it just gives the meat a little bit of a different kind of crunch and appearance. Other than that, I really don't know. I hate to say. So in the pan, I'm going to add in a little bit before I get started. You can see a little bit of vegetable oil, and I'm going to put a little bit of sesame oil in. Not necessary, but I am because I have it, because I think it's just going to impart just a tiny little bit of flavor into it too.

So that looks like a pretty tall pot.

Yeah, and again, I'm using this because it's what I have, but when I fry things, I like to have it up a little higher so it doesn't splatter all over the place. Not necessary, you could do this in a sauté pan.

It also looks like a fair amount of oil you have in there. It looks like a good quarter cup.

Yeah, about a quarter cup is— I think that's what I have down. Yeah, a third of a cup actually is what I have down. So it's, it's probably at least that. And it— because I want the meat to get in there and I want it to fry. I don't want it to sauté, I want it to fry a little bit.

Okay.

Okay, so I'm going to take those pieces that I had out here, and I'm going to let this get nice and hot before I put them in. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to coat the beef and the cornstarch. And I'm not going to do it all right now. I will do so you can see enough. I'm gonna— we're gonna have the rest for dinner. Lisa always loves coming home after the shows, and she gets— she smells it as soon as she walks in the door.

I bet. You know, it's funny, I have this thing, and maybe I'm not the only one, I worry about frying. I feel like maybe it's the method, but I feel like there's going to be oil in the entire thing that I'm frying, but maybe I'm overthinking that. Huh?

In the dish itself?

No, just like grease. Maybe like it's going to be inundated with, but maybe it's after you take it out.

One of the problems you have— people have with frying is they don't let it get hot enough.

Okay, because I don't mind the thought of frying. I'd like to. I just like to do it right. So go ahead.

If it's not hot enough, what you're frying will absorb grease.

Okay. Okay.

If you over— if you put too much in the pan at one time and you bring the temperature down, It will then get cooler, so it will soak up more grease. So when you're doing things, you have to be careful not to put too much in the pan at one time. Like this, you could have taken the meat out first of all and let it come to room temperature, so it won't be— because, and normally that's what you should do with any meat you're frying. I just, I forgot to get it out before we started.

Why?

Because then it won't cool off the shortening. Oh, wow. As much. All right. Plus, it cooks better. You're not shocking it. You're not shocking the protein as much if it's a little bit warmer.

That's a really important point.

If you like your chicken wings, you know, get them out, let them sit for half an hour. If you're going to cook something, let it sit for half an hour before you put it. You know, you want the temperature to calm down a little bit. Is it's going to react. It's part of chemistry. I don't understand it really that much, but you know, I trust people that tell me to do that. So it's again not overcrowding it. This is a lot in here right now, uh, not over— so, so it drops down. And doing it a little slowly. So that's a nice amount. Now when you put them in like this, I didn't season this this at all anymore. It's just, it is what it is. Now, to alleviate some of your fears for grease too, this is what I have set up. Okay, okay. So after they cook, they're going to sit on that and it'll drain out more of the grease.

Okay, so what about my instinct would be to to put paper towels?

Sure, you use paper under it, but if you have a— if you have a screen, the screen is going to do a better job. It's one more thing you have to clean up, but it's going to give you— it's, it's going to make it easier to let them drain properly. It's not just going to sit on the grease. Because the paper towels, it's still going to sit on the grease. The grease is underneath.

I know, I just thought of that before.

And the other thing with that is, is that it's not going to be as crispy because it's sitting on the grease. Because I don't know if you can see the crust, it almost looks like bacon, doesn't it? Yeah, the crust it's getting, and that's from the cornstarch. You want to let it get a nice crust on it. It doesn't need to quite as long on the other side because the fat has come back up to temperature. It's nice and hot again. So when I turn it over, the initial shock's not quite as bad. It won't take as long. And this is going to be a nicely— you know, these are so thin, you don't have to worry about them not being done. And even if they were a little pinkish, they won't be. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

And then there's only the, the oil. Then if you fry it properly, then the oil doesn't really go through and through. It's just a little residue after you drain.

I will show you. And they're actually going to be a little dry. Now the one thing this crust does do too is it gives the beef someplace for the sauce to cling to. Okay, so that crust on it is making it more porous rather than just coating the beef. You know, it's giving it a place to cling to a little bit. So that is that. Let's bring this over. Okay, and it's draining. I'm just going to take this off because I'm going to start with a clean pan. I could, if I was frying all the beef, which I'm going to do later, is why I'm not throwing it. I could just pour some of the oil off of it and continue from there, pour most of the oil off. But in this case, I'm just going to start with a clean—

And Robin's World is asking, have you tried using an air fryer for this preparation? I don't even know what an air fryer is.

An air fryer, you use like a teaspoon of oil. And it fries it more like, almost like a convection fryer kind of philosophy. I have not. I saw one at one show, Robin, and I— they were going to send me one. They never did. And it's probably a piece of equipment I don't fry a whole lot. I might if I had an air fryer. So if any of you people are out there listening, you want to send me one? Yeah, we don't use it hardly ever at all. It would be interesting to try using that, but I don't know. So it's one of those things until, you know, you get to try it, I really wouldn't know. So I'm just going to move, and you can see there's not a lot of grease, but it is dripping somewhat. So it did not pick up a lot. So that's just going to go behind me, and what I'm going to do now is I'm going to get the sauce ready for, uh, for the beef. And really, this is something that could be done ahead of time. I'm doing it with you now so you can see, but the sauce for it, the prep, you could really almost have ready. The marinade could be ready. So it could be done in a very short amount of time if you do your prep a little bit more on target. All right, so for this, we've got garlic, we've got some ginger, and thanks to Renee, I can now peel ginger with a spoon.

Yes, I know, I'm doing that now too. It's crazy. I know, it's crazy. It just comes right off.

And I'll tell you what, all of a sudden I like the taste of ginger. I never did before. So, you know, it could be aging that my taste has changed a little bit, and because I need stronger flavors as we get older, that I appreciate it. Lisa's still not super thrilled with it.

Yeah, you know what, I'm putting it on in smoothies and some of the recipes that I'm following for smoothies, they say to put in half an inch, a whole half an inch. And, and I put it in, it's like just a very little bite to it, but it's a wonderful flavor. I love ginger.

It's a nice warming spice too.

It is.

So the thing with ginger, even with garlic, that you have to be aware of, that that some people don't realize is that during the months when it is really hot, you have to be careful with these warming herbs, these warming flavors, because they'll get you sometimes too hot. And that's what like some of these energy drinks contain all this stuff. And that's a problem with some of them too, is they get you, they get your body overheated. Why, thank you.

Yes, you are.

Okay, so here I've got some ginger. I'm just going to cut it up. That's probably a little bit too much ginger, but still cut some. We'll save some for later. You know, last time I bought ginger for something, I think I— it stayed in my refrigerator for 6 months till I finally threw it out. This, I've gone through a huge knob of ginger.

Wow.

I'm like, this is amazing. I like it. I may end up trying to make some ginger ice cream.

Well, that sounds good.

Yeah, I've had that at restaurants, at Japanese restaurants after dinner.

I mean, one of my favorite all-time foods, favorite foods, is gingersnap cookies. I just ordered some last week too. I love, love ginger.

Well, I'm starting with chicken. Starting to get on the ginger boat.

Yeah.

All right. So we have a teaspoon of ginger, a little bigger than a clove of garlic. And I am going to put in a little bit of oil. Saute this. Let's get back over here where you can see. Let's get this on.

And, you know, Renee just said a ginger mango. That was exactly what I was thinking just before you wrote that. I want to know about a ginger mango chicken. Recipe.

That would be nice.

Yeah, right?

Very nice.

Yeah.

Okay, so this garlic sauté a little bit with the garlic, and then I have some brown sugar, some tangerine juice, some soy sauce, some cornstarch, and I need a little bit of warm water, so I'm just going to let that run to get hot.

And you know what, we're on a run here, so I think I'm going to do my little presentation presentation next week.

Did you want to—

oh no, I'll do it next week. We're— yeah, no, we're on a roll.

It was, it was faster than I thought.

Yeah, no, that's fine.

All right, so that's there. Water's still not hot, so I'm going to add in soy. And I made a little bit— when I cooked it before, I made a little bit more sauce because I thought it needed it. So you can always, if if you use my recipe, you can always double it.

What was the powder you just put in?

I just put in brown sugar.

Oh, brown sugar.

Okay, brown sugar, soy sauce, and tangerine juice. Now I'm going to turn this down just a little bit, and I'm going to add in a little bit of warm water.

And is there garlic and ginger in there? Yes. Okay.

And then as it gets hot, I'm actually going to put in a little cornstarch slurry to thicken it up. Okay, and this is what's going to make it pretty and glazy. Oh, I turned it off instead of down. All right, so let's let that heat up a little bit. And really, after this, the only thing I have to do is a garnish, and I have some scallions and some cilantro and some tangerine bits to put in it. All right, so the one thing about when you use cornstarch is that it will clump. So you want to make sure if you do this ahead of time to go back and do it again.

Yes.

Because it will separate and sit.

Yeah. Well, plus you could do a separate stir fry if you wanted of vegetables.

Oh, absolutely.

And then add it all together, right? What about that?

It would make a nice sauce just as it is if you didn't want to put anything else in it. And see how it's thickened up already?

Oh yeah.

Oh, very nice. So we're just going to let it cook a little bit, but not at real high temperature, to let the cornstarch cook a little in it, because otherwise it tastes kind of raw. Now, if it gets too thick, taste it. If it's too salty, put a little more water in it, put a little more tangerine juice in it. If it's not spicy enough for you, add some chili sauce into it. Make it more flavorful. At this point you can do what you want, and if it gets too thin, put a little more cornstarch and some water, mix it up and thicken it up.

Chicken broth, vegetable broth.

Yeah, if you want to add any broths to it, you can. I, I think with this you probably wouldn't need it. Once again, remember, this is going to coat the meat. This might not be spicy enough, so tonight when I'm put it together for Lisa. I might put a little— my new favorite stuff is, is chili sauce. It's not—

oh, I know, I love chili sauce.

Got that fruity kind of flavor.

It's amazing. Yep.

So that's done. All right, that's how fast that was. That's done. So I'm going to turn that off. I'm going to come back here. I'm going to make my garnish. All right, I have some green onions. I'm just going to clean them off. Rinsed them off once already, but let's just take the ends off. And in this instance, I'm not going to go too far down the green, but I am going to get a little of the green. And a lot of times they'll tell you not to go into the green. Why go into the green? Because I like the color. I like the color, and it's not quite as strong. I just don't go too far into it. Okay, now I've got some cilantro, and again, the cilantro is going to add a little flavor, not a deal breaker. It's more of a garnish than anything else. If you don't like cilantro and you want to use parsley, you— that's fine. If you don't want to use anything, that's fine. But you know, I just find that people eat with their eyes. It perks it up.

Oh, the, um, camera went out.

Oh, that's odd. Let's see what happened.

Definitely need that pan cam. Hang in there, we don't have a show without the pan cam.

Yeah, I know what happened. Uh, the power, I didn't plug it in.

Oh, geez. Now I'm wondering if you would garnish it with slices of tangerines.

Well, I am going to put some tangerines in there. Okay. And remember, I peeled— I had the tangerine peel that I got, so I have a tangerine sitting there. All right, so let's just let this— I'm just going to finish chopping this up while that just grabs a little bit of juice, and then we'll get it back on for the finish. That's done. You know, I heard it running and heard it stop. It wasn't paying any attention. Ah, there we go.

Yeah, sometimes it takes a couple of minutes.

Did you want to talk about your—

Oh, sure, good time, good time to do it. So, today I wanted to talk to you about hardware, which is the jewelry of the kitchen. And let me bring my handy camera around here, and I will prop it up. And I'm just going to go through a few pictures, you know, is your Is your kitchen a little tired? Is it— do you need a little refresh for it? A little, you know, something new, but that doesn't cost $1 million, and hardware is the thing you want to do. And, you know, there's so many different types. Here we have something big and bold on a kitchen island. Now, warm finishes, that is what's happening with hardware. I show it here in a faucet, but it's the type of thing that you may want to coordinate your other metals with your hardware. You don't have to, you don't have to get crazy about doing that. Meaning they don't have to, it's meaning a lot of what's happening now in kitchen design is mixing metals. So, just do it thoughtfully and you can have a very exciting, you know, kitchen. Here, this is more modern hardware that's simple and elegant. It's kind of a, you know, shaker style kitchen, but with sleek, simple, really substantial hardware, very long hardware. Also, it kind of elongates the look of the design and of the drawers. And this is different. You can see how hardware is so much the jewelry of the, of your cabinetry, and it's easy to change. Usually just make sure you get the right, the same holes. And something like this, we have knobs. There's always a question of knobs or or pulls, and you know, sometimes you can have both, and here you have both, both knobs and pulls. This type I love, which is a sort of recessed hand grab. It just, I don't know, something about it, it just looks kind of built-in and architectural. And here, now this is hardware being used as, with a contrasting color, which I think is so exciting in this particular design, really nice to look at. Basic simple hardware, you know, easy to, you know, love for many, many years. And it's very consistent and you can see that it's all laid out horizontally and on the doors you can do that, or the doors you can have vertical and the drawers you can have horizontal. So, there's a lot of nuances depending on how you use your hardware. Rustic kind of door style here, but simple modern hardware, kind of an eclectic look. And here are just some hardware boards. You can go crazy, just like you can go crazy with different ingredients. You can go crazy with tile and wallpaper and paint colors. You can go out of your mind with hardware. Oh my gosh. In fact, my kitchen is soon to be done. I should have picked that hardware probably 8 months ago, and I'm just getting close to picking it out. So, hardware can drive you crazy. It's so, so many beautiful combinations. I love this big stainless one, actually. And talking about Asian cuisine, you know, I, for a little while, I was thinking about Asian inspired hardware, which is really interesting too. So they, you know, it really gets intricate. You could— here, here is definitely the hardware jewelry, and, you know, in wonderful colors, and it really can spice up the entire design. It's a finishing touch. It's like putting on makeup. I don't know if that's a sexist thing or what, but, but I know I look better with makeup on. I know that. How about you, Chef? Do you look better with makeup on?

I've only had it on a few times, and I have to admit, I did. I just didn't like it.

I know, I know. So again, these are more rustic. You have rustic, you can have glam hardware, you can have all different types of hardware, but do, you know, think about it thoughtfully. This is a very elegant, elegant hardware. It's It's just simple. Sometimes less is more. And again, here's this picture of warm, the warm colors, which are so popular. And that, yep, then long, long pieces. Now you'll see here the cool warm. You'll see in the bottom gray has an orange knob, and then the top orange has a gray knob. It's kind of, you wanna sometimes exploit the cool color and a warm color, which really makes it pop. This is a better picture. Gray drawers with the orange, so it makes each color pop. Again, the contrast of the black, big white knobs here, and there we go. So, that's my, you know, a little bit of insight on hardware. It changes the whole look of the kitchen.

Absolutely. It's important, and people don't place enough emphasis on on it, I think.

That's right.

So we're back in action here. All right, I have my sauce heating back up a little bit, so all I'm going to do is move this back over to the pan. Take our beef, and you know, I've— for purposes of this, I've let this cool down a little bit more than I probably would have. So normally, you know, it would be— I'd have the sauce getting done, or the sauce would have been almost done while I'm frying the beef, but I want you to get the whole experience. So right now, my sauce is hot, my beef is in here, and I'm just going to toss it around a little bit.

So you don't keep it in there for too long because you want to maintain the crisp?

Yeah, the crispness. I'm just coating it at this point. All right, so, you know, if I put it all in there and I had all the sauce, it would— there shouldn't be really any sauce left basically. And what I'm doing, just getting a nice flavorful coating on it.

Oh, I mean, you just said something so profound again. There shouldn't be any sauce left. I was envisioning a sauce, you know, type of dish, not just, not just a coating. Now, wow, totally different.

So, I mean, this is just something you can put tangerines in with the sauce too and let them get coated, or you can leave it out just for as a garnish. I think I put them in the last time and they were good that way, and you just want to make the dish pretty. So I've served it on a little bit of rice, and here's my little—

Oh my gosh, that looks like— that looks really fabulous. That's a Looks like one of your best. I'm making that tomorrow. That looks fantastic.

It was really good. So again, if you're doing it, you know, the rice is on the back of the stove cooking. Let it simmer, you know, with jasmine rice. And you really want to try jasmine rice if you haven't, because it really has a lot of great flavor to it. You know, it's different. It's that as soon as you taste it, you know, this is what I get when I go out kind of rice. And I hadn't really done much with jasmine. It cooks so easily and you just pretty much bring it up to a boil, turn it off and let it simmer. Goes really well with this kind of stuff.

And of course you can do the same, or can you do the same exact recipe with chicken?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Chicken, you could use, you know, do the same thing with cornstarch and marinate it. So it really will come out really nicely. So that's it for today. That's my tangerine chicken. And again, you could—

this is tangerine skirt steak.

Skirt steak. I'm sorry, tangerine beef. Yeah, it would also be very nice with chicken, like you said, or you could put pineapple in instead of tangerines.

Oh, like that.

Yeah. So have fun with it.

Beautiful. Looks fantastic.

Well, that's it for today. And I have anything else for Susan?

No, that's it. We'll see you next. What are we doing next week?

Next week is a good question. I don't know. I know I just scheduled a crème brûlée, and I scheduled a Spanish shrimp tortilla, which is basically, you know, it's a potato and egg dish in a pan, like, kind of like a Spanish kind of quiche, I guess, for lack of a better description. So let's see, scheduled. Yep, shrimp tortilla española is next week.

Okay.

And after that, we're doing crème brûlée, which will actually be like a flan or crème brûlée.

Oh, that's my favorite. That's all I order for dessert when I go out. Crème brûlée, I'm there.

Pecan-crusted red snapper.

Yum.

We've got some flavorful shows coming.

Nice. Good. Okay, see you next time.

And we'll see you next week around the kitchen table.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.