Long Beans with Pork (乱棍打死猪八戒)

This is a very simple and common chinese dish.  I think almost every housewife knows how to cook this.  I have used only 3 basic ingredients here: long beans, thin pork slices and carrot.  Normally, I would add fried egg tofu, but I didn't buy it during my routine morning marketing because I thought that I still have two tubes of it in my refrigerator.  Well, stock checking is also an important step in cooking.  Anyway, it will not affect the taste of the dish except that my eldest son will ask why there is no fried egg tofu because it is his favourite.  However, my youngest son hates it.  He only likes the long beans.  My second son likes the pork meat.  Sometimes, instead of pork meat, I will add prawns or chicken meat (breast or fillet).

The chinese wordings in parenthesis means "A lot of wooden rods kills the Pig God".  This was a nickname given to this dish, because the long beans symbolize the wooden rods and the pork meat symbolizes the Pig God {The character is from a famous masterpiece "JOURNEY TO THE WEST" which talks about a monk traveling to the west to collect the Buddha Script (唐三藏西天取经)}.

Ingredients:-

Long beans (2 packets)
Carrot, thinly sliced
Pork, thinly sliced (or prawns or chicken breast/fillet)
Egg tofu
Light soya sauce
Sesame oil
Garlic
Pepper
Cornflour
Peanut oil

Method:-

1. Wash and pluck the long beans into short strips (about 1½ inches long).
2. Cut the carrot into thin strips.
3. Marinate the pork with light soya sauce, sesame oil and pepper.  Just before stir-frying, coat it with some cornflour.
4. Heat up a wok with some peanut oil.
5. Stir-fry the garlic till fragrant.
6. Add in the marinated pork and stir-fry till slightly golden brown.  Dish up and set aside.
7. Heat a little peanut oil, stir-fry some garlic and carrot and then add in the long beans.  Mix them well and cover with a wok cover.
8. Open the cover and stir-fry the mixture a few times until you can smell the fragrance of the long beans.
9. Lower the heat and let the long beans simmer (with the cover back on).  Remember to stir-fry it every few minutes to make sure the long beans don't get burnt.
10. Use the spatula to press on the long bean to feel the degree of softness.  Once it has reached your preferred softness, add in the pork, mix it well and cover it to let it simmer for a few more minutes on medium heat.
11. Then add in the fried egg tofu, mix it well, add in the light soya sauce to your taste, mix well on high heat for a few seconds, dish up and serve.

Whenever I was stir-frying the pork, the aroma will attract my second son (if he's at home) to the kitchen to find out what I was cooking.  He would comment "Wah, smell so good!"  I would cook this dish at least once a week.  Sometimes, I would put prawns as they are said to be good for the development of the brain power.  Don't know true or not, but it's definitely a good source of protein for the developing children.