Midcentury Chinese Pepper Steak.
Elsie Lee says this Chinese Pepper Steak recipe, which appears in her hard-to-find Easy Gourmet Cooking, cannot be improved on. It’s a midcentury classic; if you grew up then you will immediately recognize the taste profile of celery flavored with soy sauce as what we thought Chinese food was supposed to taste like. Not that it’s bad by any means, and no less an authority than Fuchsia Dunlop uses celery in some of her recipes. Serves 4.
Ingredients:
1 ½ lb round steak
1 or more large green bell peppers, seeded and cored and sliced into strips lengthwise
2 T olive oil
2 T chopped onion
1 clove garlic, minced
½ c celery, sliced
1 t soy sauce
3 T cornstarch mixed with 2 T water
1 c beef stock
Method: slice the round steak across the grain into very thin strips. (It helps if the meat is almost frozen when you do this.) Sear quickly in olive oil in a hot skillet till no red meat remains, but don’t cook any longer or it will get tough. Add bell pepper slices, onion, garlic and celery to the pan and toss to coat the vegetables with the oil and cook them just a bit. Add ½ c beef stock and cover; simmer 5 minutes. Mix in the cornstarch/water combination and stir until the stock begins to thicken; add the rest of the beef stock gradually. (You may not want all of it.) Serve hot, over rice.
I’ve had this nice quick dish since childhood. The picture liberated me from the guilt feelings I had for not getting the beef browned.
Been looking for Elsie Lee cookbooks too. Weirdly difficult to find them all.
The picture of Elsie Lee or the picture of the steak? LOL. I quickly realized I could not adequately brown the beef without making it tough, and it’s going to be covered by the gravy anyway.
Also, are there more than 2 cookbooks? I’m only aware of the “Easy Gourmet” set.
The pepper steak. I doubt Elsie Lee tanned well.
You convinced me to get the books, I haven’t yet, there may be three. Some appear under different titles, which confused me, but, maybe:
Simple Gourmet Cookery ISBN-10 0877950113
Party Cookbook IBSN-2 0877950849
The 2nd Easy Gourmet Cookbook ASIN B00351ZULA
Maybe.
ISBNs were first used in 1968, according to Wikipedia, so Easy Gourmet Cooking pre-dates them and 2nd Easy Gourmet Cookbook may have scraped in under the wire, at least for a first edition. Neither of my copies has an ISBN. Please do let us know about the other titles if you find them. Also, to muddy the waters, the blurb on the back of Easy Gourmet Cooking promises that “her next cook book, Cooking for Men Only, will be published in the spring.” Which would have been 1963.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Lee
How about:
The Bachelor’s Cookbook Hardcover – January 1, 1962
by Lee Sheridan (Author), Ted Bernstein (Illustrator)
ASIN : B000O02VDA
Publisher : The Crowell-Collier Press; First Edition (January 1, 1962)
All I mentioned are on order. May add to my library. If not, many birthdays coming up…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Lee
I assume the Bachelor’s Cookbook is the “Cooking for Men Only” that was promised on the back of “Easy Gourmet Cooking”. And she was a Quaker! I found that interesting because I have attended quite a few Quaker potlucks in my day and they have the reputation of being some of the worst cooks in the world.