Recipe: BBQ Asian steaks with pak choi and soy

Genevieve Taylor shared a delicious barbecue recipe with Country Life.
** Get more recipes at www.countrylife.co.uk/food-drink/recipes **
Ingredients:
350g basmati rice, soaked in plenty of cold water for an hour
2 tbsp vegetable oil
800g piece skirt steak, at room temperature
(take out of the fridge at the same time as you begin to soak the rice)
4 large heads pak choi
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the sauce:
2 spring onions, thinly sliced
A thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely grated
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Juice of 1 lime
¼ tsp Chinese five spice
6 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp water
A pinch of dried chilli flakes, to taste
Black pepper
Kitchen preparation:
1. Soak the rice for an hour in a bowl of cold water. Drain well.
2. Get the sauce ready to cook by adding all the ingredients to a jug, ready to pour into a hot heat-proof pan on the barbecue (a cast iron skillet is ideal with no plastic handles).
Method
1. Fire up 2 out of 3 of the main burners on the barbecue and leave to heat up for 5 minutes. Then turn on the infrared sizzle zone which will be up to heat in an instant.
2. Put rice pan on the hot sizzle zone, add the oil and drained rice and stir well to coat the grains. Pour in recently boiled water (have a hot kettle to hand) to 1cm above the rice level. Bring back to boil, put the lid on tight and boil for one minute before transferring to the unlit burner to steam over indirect heat - making sure pan handle is turned so that barbecue lid can be closed. Providing you don’t take the pan lid off, the rice will take around 12 minutes to steam to perfection - but a few minutes longer will be fine too.
3. Start sauce by setting the cast iron skillet on the sizzle zone to heat up. When it’s really hot, pour in the sauce - it should bubble pretty much instantly - just let it sizzle for a few seconds before transferring to the middle burner. Reduce the flame to as low as possible and leave to keep warm, stirring once or twice, while you cook the steak.
4. Season the steak with a drizzle of oil, plenty of pepper and a little salt. Sear the steak on the sizzle zone pressing gently all over with the tongs to get maximum contact with the grill bars - a couple of minutes should do it, then turn and grill for about 3 more minutes on the other side. This should give a medium-rare steak, depending on thickness. Cook for another 30 seconds to a minute on each side if you prefer a medium to well done steak. Turn off sizzle zone. Transfer steak to the warming rack above the lit burners and leave to rest while the rice finishes cooking. Brush a little sauce over the steak as it rests.
5. Slice the pak choi in half through the root and drizzle over a little sesame oil. Sear for a couple of minutes each side over a hot grill until tender but still with plenty of crunch.
To serve:
Slice steak thinly across the grain and arrange on a platter, along with the pak choi. Drizzle over a little sauce. Serve the rest of the sauce separately, along with the rice.

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The rice:
Soaking is unnecessary, it doesn't need it because you're not making sushi or anything like that. The cooking process hydrates the rice. The only water it needs is enough to remove external starches so it doesn't become gummy/excessively sticky. You'd also want to add some salt to the rice - it's a flavour enhancer. Otherwise, it'd taste lifeless/dull/bland.
The lack of ginger/shaoxing in the marinade makes it disappointing. You need a lot more ginger than that. Black pepper is a poor choice for a marinade, it infuses too much bitterness
The pak choi shouldn't be eaten with its roots, it should be briefly blanched and then stir-fried using high heat. Ginger/garlic/salt/msg/soy/shaoxing are the appropriate seasonings, not sesame oil. The sesame oil would end up overpowering and tasting quite disgusting.