Ginger Beef Satay with Charred Asian Vegetables

This ginger beef satay seemed to have all of the components that would make it a great, easy dinner I could make for myself, scale up for a crowd, and share with friends looking for new recipes. There's a minimal list of ingredients, the instructions are clear, and there's very little active time. But the tragic thing about Curtis Stone's ginger beef satay with charred Asian vegetables is, it wasn't very good. 

For Curtis' ginger beef satay, you make the ginger marinade in a food processor, slice your top sirloin thinly across the grain, then pound it out between two sheets of plastic wrap using a meat tenderizer (or cast iron pan or rolling pan or other heavy implement). Curtis instructs the reader to let the meat sit in the marinade for at least 30 minutes at room temperature, or up to 12 hours in the refrigerator. I guess this is where things started to go wrong. Ginger acts as a natural tenderizer, according to the recipe header - with the 1-inch piece of ginger I had grated into the marinade, my steak was so tender after 45 minutes, it fell apart instead of properly threading on the skewer. But may be it's an issue with the chef (meaning me - my slicing or my skewers)?A bigger issue (the biggest issue?) is the marinade contains cilantro stems (all the stems from one bunch of cilantro). After cooking my tiny pieces of lovely top sirloin that were not cheap enough to merit this treatment, I found myself with delicious, tender meat that tasted solely of cilantro. And I like cilantro... but not this much. Ginger beef satay it is not.

You'll notice I'm using a combination of Brussels sprouts and snow peas, even though the recipe does call for ½ a head of Napa cabbage, a head of bok choy, 2 ounces of snow peas (I took that to mean a handful), and ½ a white onion. My grocery store had no Napa cabbage or bok choy, and the cabbage they did have looked terrible. I figured slicing Brussels sprouts into the same size (1 ½ inch pieces) would be a fine substitution. But after the specified 10 minutes "on the grill in a grill box", which I modified to work in tinfoil over my indoor grill/griddle, my snow peas were thoroughly cooked and my Brussels were still hard as rocks. Maybe it's an issue with my lower-power grill, but a higher power grill wouldn't solve the problem of overcooked snow peas and undercooked cabbage since they are supposed to go on at the same time.

All things considered, the ginger beef satay from Good Food Good Life was more enjoyable the Japanese pancakes, but this recipe is not something I would encourage anyone to make in it's current version. I plan to find a different recipe for ginger beef satay with veggies and see if I can find a winner, because if it could be as tasty as it is simple and fast to prepare, it would be a fantastic recipe. And, I'll also be trying another two recipes from Good Food Good Life to determine how the other recipes fare in my kitchen.

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