Bibimbap

Before you start

• a heavy pan or a stone bowl, if you want the crust on the rice

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 180gshort-grain rice
• 120gbeef sirloin — or leave it out — the bowl stands up without it
• 2eggs
• 150gspinach
• 100gbeansprouts
• 1carrot
• 100gshiitake mushrooms
• 2 tbspgochujang
• 2 tspsesame oil
• 1 tbspoil
• 2 tbspsoy sauce

Method

6 steps

1. boil · 18m walk away

   Rice rinsed until the water runs clear, then on with its lid and the lowest heat you have.

2. chop · 12m

   Carrot into matchsticks, mushrooms sliced, beef cut into thin strips against the grain, spinach washed properly — grit in the bowl ruins it and no amount of sauce hides it.

3. fry · 14m

   Each vegetable cooked separately in a little oil and seasoned on its own with sesame oil, a scrap of garlic and salt: carrot two minutes, mushrooms four, sprouts blanched, spinach wilted and then squeezed dry in your hands. This is the whole dish. Cooked together they trade their water and you get one flavour five times.

4. fry · 5m

   Beef tossed with soy and sesame oil and fried hard and fast in the same pan, thirty seconds a side. It should be brown outside and only just done through.

5. fry · 4m

   Eggs fried in hot oil until the white is crisp and lacy at the edge and the yolk still runs.

6. finish · 4m

   Rice into hot bowls, the vegetables laid round the edge in their own separate wedges rather than tossed, beef in the middle, egg on top and the gochujang beside it. Mixing is the eater's job and it happens at the table.