My parents’ Indon maid loves to watch me cook. She once remarked that Chinese cooking was “sangat mudah” (very easy) and I couldn’t agree more – minus all the peeling, the pounding and the multitude of ingredients to be added.

Well, I had some venison in the freezer, so I decided to cook it…but you can do the same with other types of  meat, be it beef, lamb, chicken…or even pork. Actually, all that was needed were a few slices of ginger…

…and some soy sauce and sugar but I had some chillies and Chinese celery.

Prior to cooking, I mixed the meat that I had cut into thin slices with some pounded papaya leaves to tenderise it (in case it was a bit too tough) and left it to stand for about half an hour.

Then I rinsed the meat to get rid of the leaves.

After that, I marinated the meat with soy sauce and sugar (I used gula apong/attap – palm/nipah sugar) plus a bit of Foochow red wine, pepper and finely-chopped Chinese celery…and left it to stand for another half an hour or so.

To cook the meat, I heated a bit of oil in the wok and threw in the ginger, followed by the chillies…and the meat. After stir frying it for a while, all the juices would come out of the meat…and I let it simmer until it became quite dry and the gravy had turned thick. Then I served it on a plate…

…and garnished it with a few sprigs of Chinese celery…

The meat was nice and tender and tasted good. Yum! Yum!