The gravy used in this recipe is quite special.  It is a little more Asian, unlike the usual black pepper, or mushroom gravy, it is made with oyster sauce.  Its nice.

You can serve with fries, bake potato, mashed potatoes, boiled vegetables, salad, etc.  The picture shows it is served with a serving of Seafood Mushroom Spaghetti Olio Aglio, the recipe just posted before this one.

Ingredients (Serve 2)

1. 2 slices of beef steak (cut of your choice, eg sirloin, rib eye)
2. ½ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
3. ½ teaspoon salt
4. 2 tablespoon Oyster sauce
5. 1 tablespoon sugar
6. 1 tablespoon sesame oil
7. 1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine (花雕) or brandy
8. 3 tablespoon water
9. 1 tablespoon cooking oil
10. 2 clove of garlic

Method

1. Sprinkle the salt and the pepper on the steak.
2. Grill the steak both side to the desired wellness. I am bad at estimation, but what you can do is use your fingers and press in the middle of the steak.  A very well done steak is very hard (almost no more springy), while a medium done steak retains a little springy. 
3. Serve on a plate.
4. Peel and chop the garlic.
5. In a bowl, mix ingredients 4 to 8.
6. In a sauce pan, heat up the cooking oil, and add in the garlic and fry till fragrant.  Pour in the mixture and bring to boil for 1 min. 
7. Pour over steak and serve.

For the grilling, I used a grilling pan.  If you have not seen it, it is actually like a frying pan, usually rectangular shape, and instead of flat on the frying surface, it has strips that allow your meat to be just touching the strips while cooking, instead of touching the whole frying surface.  It is useful to grill meat at home if you do not have a grill and cook with gas stove. 

Olio Aglio means stir fry with garlic and olive oil. I personally like it as it is not creamy as in cream sauce (although I like cream sauce too) or strong tasting as in tomato based sauce.  I just had this for Christmas this year.

Ingredients (Serve 2)

1. ¼ packet spaghetti
2. 5 garlic
3. 4 tablespoon Extra virgin olive oil
4. 10-15 cherry tomatoes
5. 5 fresh button mushroom
6. ½ red capsicum (if you like spicy, can replace this or add in red chilli)
7. 4-6 big prawns
8. 1 medium size squid
9. 1/2 teaspoon salt
10. freshly cracked black pepper

Method

1. Peel and chop up the garlic into small pieces or chucks if you like to bite them.
2. Wash the cherry tomatoes.  Wash and slice the mushroom.  Remove the seed of capsicum and cut into small squares.
3. Wash the squid and remove the head.  Remove the back-bone of the squid (a transparent strip that runs along the length of the squid body.  Remove the skin of the squid. (you can do it with your finger nails or a knife, scrape off a little and you can pull it off easily).  For the squid head, cut away the eyes, and also squeeze out the “ball” from the mouth of the squid (its quite hard to eat).  Cut into strips (for the body, you may also like to cut into rings).
4. Wash the prawns.  You may like to remove the shell or just leave them on. (I like to trim away the legs and also the tip of the head which is quite sharp.)
5. Boil the spaghetti in a pot of water until the desired softness. Drained and set aside.  Leave the pot of water boiling if you are proceeding to next step.
6. Heat up a pan with medium heat, add in the olive oil, garlic, cherry tomato, mushroom, squid, prawn, capsicum, salt, and cracked black pepper, and stir briefly and cover for 5 mins.
7. While the pan is cooking, put the spaghetti back in the boiling water for ½ to 1 mins, and drain again (so that it is hot and moist, not stick together)
8. Optional: not part of this recipe, you can also pour in ½ cup of white wine into the pan and let it boil, it should taste good too.
9. Pour the spaghetti into the pan and toss it. 
10. Serve hot with some cracked black pepper on the side of the plate.

Optional: serve with a beef steak (recipe to be posted in another post).

Sometimes no matter how long you boil the peanuts, they still don’t turn out to be soft.  Here are some tips you can try while cooking peanuts.

1. Soak the peanuts in hot boiling water for 30 mins before cooking.
2. Use a right pot size where you can have sufficient water depth in the pot.  A rough guide is the depth of water is at least ½ to ¾ of the diameter of the pot.  The reason is that the temperature of the water is lower at the surface compare to the bottom where the flame is burning the bottom of the pot.  Hence you need sufficient dept of water to ensure the peanuts are cooking in the higher temperature water and not near the surface.
3. Put a Chinese table spoon made of china in the pot during cooking.  I don’t know why, my mom uses this method and I think possibly the spoon is able to keep the temperature of the water higher.
4. You need patience.  It will take 3 hours. 
5. You can use slow cooker and cook it overnight.