We'll start by trimming the fat off the edges of our beef fillet.

Then, we'll start cutting the beef into strips, about 1 cm thick and about 5 cm long. We'll want to cut against the grain of the meat, which results in more tender bites.

Then, we'll place our beef slices in a bowl of cold water and gently massage the meat. This helps remove some of the myoglobin and the more "meaty" taste/smell from the beef. After 1-2 minutes, drain the beef with a colander.

You might notice my dad referring to this as ngàuh láuh. ngàuh means beef, and láuh is a reference to a Chinese style of cutting meat into long and thin pieces. In Cantonese, láuh is another name for willow tree, in which the leaves are similarly long and thin. The English name for this dish is usually just Black Pepper Beef, but the Chinese name, haahk jiu ngàuh láuh, makes it a point to distinguish exactly how the meat is cut.

This isn't always true, but there's a tendency in Chinese cuisine to slice the meat before serving, versus Western cuisine, where we typically slice the meat after it's cooked.

In a bowl, we'll mix black pepper (1 tsp), cornstarch (1 tbsp), water (1 tbsp), oyster sauce (1 tbsp), light soy sauce (1 tsp), Shaoxing cooking wine (1 tbsp), and red wine (1 tbsp).

Mix together until the marinade is even.

For some flair, my dad likes to use red wine to add a hint of grape & sourness. He also likes to add lemon peels to his Shaoxing wine for more zest.

Before we mix the beef with the marinade, we'll want to squeeze as much fluid out as we can. One of the main goals of this dish is to avoid having excess fluid or sauce pooling when we're done cooking it.

With our hands, we'll press and squeeze the beef against a colander to force any excess moisture out of the beef.

Then, we'll add the beef to the marinade and massage the meat for about 30-60 seconds. This helps the beef absorb the marinade and become more tender.

For our vegetables, we'll be mincing garlic (2 clove), and slicing up a variety of bell peppers and red onion for color. For each bell pepper, we'll only be using about 1/4 to 1/3 of each, so if you'd rather just stick to one color and use up a whole entire bell pepper, that's fine too.

If you're freestyling with the amounts and veering off the recipe, just make sure to be more conservative on the veggies and avoid using ones with high water content (like bok choy). Bell peppers have lower water content, but if you cook an excess of them, your sauce will be too watery.

Next, we'll create the sauce for our black pepper beef. We'll be mixing cornstarch (1 tbsp), water (1 tbsp), sugar (1 tsp), light soy sauce (1 tsp), dark soy sauce (1 tsp), red wine (1 tbsp), salt (0.50 tsp), oyster sauce (1 tsp), and Shaoxing cooking wine (1 tbsp) in a separate bowl.

We'll set our stove to high heat and let our wok heat up for about 2-3 minutes. Once our wok is hot enough, we'll add corn oil (2 tbsp).

While we wait, my dad has another trick to keep the beef juicier: add oil (2 tbsp) to the beef. The oil helps seal the juices and trap them inside the beef.

Mix the beef around for about 20-30 seconds to evenly coat the oil.

Restaurants are able to get away with tossing everything all at once, since they have much more powerful stoves and larger woks.

For us at home, we'll need to cook in stages.

1. Add the beef, and cook for about 1 minute. Once the beef starts to change color, transfer out of the wok. We're only looking to partially cook the beef here.
2. Add the minced garlic, and let it cook for about 20-30 seconds.
3. Add the veggies, and cook for about 90 seconds
4. Add the beef back in, and cook for about 45-60 seconds
5. Add the slurry sauce, and cook everything for another minute.
   1. My dad doesn't always use the entire sauce, which is a judgment call that he makes since this recipe isn't supposed to have too much sauce pooling at the bottom of the dish.
6. Add sesame oil (1 tsp). Pour some black pepper (1 tsp) into your hand, and slowly pour it around the wok. Mix and cook for 45-60 seconds
7. Cook and mix everything together for another minute.

My dad always tries a taste to see if it needs any adjustments.

If it's good, we'll plate our dish and call our loved ones over to eat!