Some evenings you just haven’t got time to cook but you don’t fancy a ready meal or a takeaway. There’s only one thing for it - stir-fry.

All you need is a couple of different vegetables, a type of onion (spring is best but any will do), ginger, garlic and chili and a protein and you’re away. Dinner in 20 minutes, sooner if you’re a fast chopper!

This is beef one is one of my favourites, you don’t need much meat with stir-fry so you can afford a really good cut. You marinade for just a few minutes whilst you prepare the rest, but with delicate meat or fish that is plenty, I’m not that up on cooking with tofu but I’m pretty sure that the same principles will apply here too.

serves 2

Ingredients
200g highest quality lean beef steak
1 carrot
2 small heads pak choi
2 or 3 spring onions
small thumb of ginger
1 chilli (I like a big red one)
1 fat clove garlic
glug of soy sauce
glug of dry sherry
splash of seasame oil
glug groundnut (or other flavourless) oil, for cooking

1 Cut steak into very fine strips, chop garlic, ginger and chili finely - if you’re having rice I’d put it on now too
2 Mix in beef strips with garlic, ginger, chili, seasame oil, sherry and soy sauce, leave to marinade whilst you prepare veg
3 Wash and chop veg into bite size strips
4 Heat the groundnut oil in a wok until very hot, swirl round to cover the whole of the wok
5 Open some windows, its about to get smoky - add spring onions and carrots to the pan cook for 30 seconds
6 Add pak choi and then 15 seconds later the beef with its marinade
7 Cook until beef is just no longer pink, serve with rice and chopsticks - they’re much more fun than forks