It’s week 3 of the Summer Fest! Last week we all made recipes using fruit from trees, and this week it’s all about Beans and Greens. If you haven’t yet heard about Summer Fest, it’s a four-week celebration of fresh-from-the-garden food: recipes, growing tips, even tricks for storing and preserving summer’s best with my co-hosts White on Rice, Away to Garden, Gluten-Free Girl and Matt Bites. Of course, It’s not a party without your participation! And I’ll tell you how in just a bit.

My choice in the greens category is Chinese Broccoli or Gai-Lan (guy-LAHN) my favorite Asian vegetable. Earlier this year, I grew gai-lan in our garden….and failed. The failure had nothing to do with the vegetable itself, it was just me traveling too much and giving very little garden love to poor gai-lan.

So, I’m going to give you step-by-step photo instructions on how to make this “most flavorful noodle dish in the world” recipe from Corrine Trang’s new book called Noodles Every Day.

Chinese Broccoli (Gai-Lan)

I have a modest garden, and there are some vegetables that my boys have laid claim to. One of them was regular broccoli and the other Chinese broccoli. They wanted to see how big the broccoli could get and refused to let me even touch them!

You have no idea the patience and willpower it took for me to NOT cut the broccoli! I had nightmares about this thing.

While the broccoli still tasted great, even after being plucked a bit past its prime…but unfortunately, that’s not how Chinese broccoli works. Once the Chinese broccoli stem starts shooting up, and before it begins flowering, that’s the time to pick and enjoy them.

If you wait too long and the flowers open up, the Chinese broccoli becomes bitter. You can also tell from the cut stems if the Chinese broccoli will be perfect or too old. See the bottoms of these cut stems? It’s milky-transluscent and smooth.

If the bottoms of the stem have a hard white circle in the middle (instead of smooth, milky and translucent) it will probably be past its prime and taste tough and bitter. Well, our home-grown Chinese broccoli grew VERY TALL and bloomed with small white flowers…but tasted so bitter. boo.

Photo below is store-bought Chinese Broccoli…see the beautiful stem-bottoms?

So, the lesson learned — I’m putting the kids in charge of a different vegetable this year…maybe something that grows super-fast and tall…corn?

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For this Broccoli Beef Noodle Stir Fry recipe, you can use ANY type of noodles. Really, spaghetti noodles are fantastic in this dish. I happened to have Japanese style egg-noodles, so that’s what I used! Cook your noodles according to package directions.

While the noodles are cooking, marinate the beef slices in soy sauce, cornstarch, sugar, oyster sauce and rice wine. If you don’t have rice wine, use dry sherry or any dry white wine will do. The sugar and the oyster sauce will help the meat caramelize.

You want beautiful, carmelized meat in your stir fry?

Here’s the secret. DO NOT CROWD THE MEAT! Single layer, ladies and gents!

Once you add it to the wok or frying pan, LEAVE THE THING ALONE. Resist the temptation to shake, move it around or flip…until the first side has a chance to caramelize. Then flip.

See the nicely caramelized bits?

Once the meat finishes cooking, remove to a plate. Now it’s time for Chinese Broccoli (Gai Lan).

Stir fry for a minute, scooping up the oils at the bottom of the wok all over the Chinese Broccoli. Bathe the oil over the Chinese Broccoli.

Now turn heat down, add 1/4 cup of water or browth and cover to let steam.

A couple of minutes later…test the Chinese Broccoli to see if done! A knife should pierce easily into the steam.

Now its the cooked noodles turn to take a bath in the sauce.

See it absorb all the juicy bits?

Now return the beef and broccoli to the wok and serve!!

Yum.

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How you can join Summer Fest

Summer Fest 2009 is a four-week, cross-blog celebration co-created (alphabetically listed) by A Way to Garden, Matt Armendariz of Mattbites, Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen, and Todd and Diane of White on Rice Couple, with guest appearances from Shauna and Daniel Ahern of Gluten-Free Girl, Simmer Till Done’s Marilyn Pollack Naron, and Paige Smith Orloff of The Sister Project. And from you -that’s critical. Your contributions are desired, and needed.

Will you play along? Have a recipe or tip that fits any of our weekly themes? Starting today, with the subject of herbs, you can contribute in various ways, big or small. Contribute a whole post, or a comment -whatever you wish. It’s meant to be fun, viral, fluid. No pressure, just delicious. The possibilities:

Simply leave your tip or recipe or favorite links in the comments below a Summer Fest post on my blog, and then go visit my collaborators and do the same.

The cross-blog event idea works best when you leave your recipe or favorite links (whether to your own blog or someone else’s) at all the host blogs. That way, they are likely to be seen by the widest audience. Everyone benefits, and some pretty great dialog starts simmering.

Or think bigger: Publish entire entire posts of your own, if you wish, and grab the juicy Summer Fest 2009 tomato badge (illustrated by Matt of Mattbites).

Summer Fest 2009 Schedule:

• Tuesday, July 28: HERBS. Any and all.

• Tuesday, August 4: FRUITS FROM TREES (also known as stone fruits, but we won’t scream if you toss in a berry or another fruit, promise).

• Tuesday, August 11: BEANS-AND-GREENS WEEK (either or both, your choice).

• Tuesday, August 18: TOMATO WEEK. How do you like them love apples?

What did my co-hosts make for the Summer Fest Party?

Diane and Todd make a salad with the TOPS of radishes, beets and carrots!

A beautiful Kale Frittata from Margaret of Away to Garden

Shauna joins us this week with her very first home=grown salad ever!

Simply gorgeous – Matt Armendariz shares one of his top 5 fav recipes of all time.