Of the World (Recipe: Sichuan Beef)

The bible is very clear in telling us to be apart from the world, to be separate, not to follow the same patterns as the world.

Romans 12: 2: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

This is not as easy as it sounds is it? Personally, I have major struggles with setting myself apart from the world. How do I set myself apart? How do I know when I am falling into the category ‘of the world’? You would think that we would have to spend a good amount of time in pursuit of this answer….WRONG! The bible is just so amazing….it literally gives us allllll the answers! The answer to this predicament lies in

1 John 2: 16: For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world.

Wow! This sounds like a good litmus test for checking if we’re going in the way of the world or according to the will of God. If we find ourselves constantly giving into the desires of our flesh, be it lust, gluttony, slothfulness, addictions of any sort….then we should have alarm bells ringing in our head telling us that we’re heading in the direction of the world! Addictions need not be drugs, alcohol or tobacco….addictions simply mean anything that causes an obsessive compulsion in us…it can be watching TV, chatting online, movies, music….any of these things that we seem to spend an exorbitant amount of time on, without spending equal or more time on our responsibilities or with the Lord, can be deemed as addictions. Can you identify any addictions in your life? If we are giving into the desires of our eyes, this is another sign that we are going with the flow of the world. What do we mean by desires of our eyes? It simply means being lead by what we see. Making choices based on the lure of things as we see them! It can be people or things! And of course the world is full of attractive things, do we stop to think if it’s the will of God for us to have what we choose? If not, then we’re thinking like the world! Do we take pride in what we have? Proud of our wealth, our education, our looks, our spouses, our children, our home, our car, our jewelry, our vacations……do we take pride in having something that some one else does not? Then we are definitely part of the world! As we see in the above verse, all these things are from the world and not God!

Personally my life is full of the things listed above, I guess I’ve never realized that it was this easy to be of the world! But how fortunate are we to have an ever loving and forgiving Lord who will forgive us of these shortcomings if we confess them! Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us be better tuned to his directions and corrections so that we can avoid falling into this trap again!

I hope you like Chinese cuisine because today’s recipe is some spicy Sichuan beef!

Sichuan Beef

Ingredients:

For meat:

Beef – 500gms

Chilly powder – 1 teaspoon

Salt – as required

For marinade:

Ginger – Garlic paste – 1 tablespoon

Egg – 1

Soy Sauce – 2 tablespoons

Corn flour – 2 tablespoons

Plain flour – 1 tablespoon

Oil for frying – as required

For sauce:

Sesame oil ( if you have if not sunflower oil is fine) – 2 tablespoons

Diced spring onion bulbs – 5

Diced spring onion stem – 2 tablespoons

Ginger-garlic paste – 1 tablespoon

Beef stock – 1 cup

Soy Sauce – 2 tablespoons

Tomato ketchup – ½ cup ( I use Heinz, the taste of your ketchup should determine how much you use as some can be very sweet or very sour)

Pepper – 1 tablespoon

Dry red chilly – 4

Sugar – 1 tablespoon

Vinegar – 1 tablespoon

Corn flour – 2 tablespoons

Cold water – ½ cup

Instructions:

1. Cut the beef into medium sized square pieces and pressure cook with chilly powder and salt.
2. Marinate the cooked beef in the marinade ingredients and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
3. Fry the marinated beef and keep it aside.
4. In a Wok or Kadai, heat sesame oil, put in the dry red chilly, sauté for a few seconds, then add ginger garlic paste, when the raw smell subsides, add spring onion bulbs.
5. When the spring onion is light brown, add the fried beef and stir well.
6. Now add the soy sauce, ketchup, pepper, sugar and vinegar. Stir well and add the beef stock. Let it boil for 2 minutes. Then add the corn flour dissolved in the cold water, let it boil further for five minutes, till the consistency changes to the desired thickness. If you want it very thick, boil it longer, if not, till it’s as thick as you prefer it.
7. Garnish with spring onion stem and serve hot.