Kenpo is an American born martial arts system characterized by the use of quick moves in rapid-fire succession. It is part karate and part kung fu (think Bruce Lee) with roots in Japanese Kosho-Ryu. It also has aspects of Jui-Jitsu, but for our purposes it focuses on leg, knee, and hand strikes as a cardio workout.
Having some background in martial arts, today was easy, but also a very good cardio workout. My technique is a little rusty and I didn't like the speed of Kenpo compared to something like Muay Thai as you tend to get more sloppy, but it jacked my heart rate and I got a great sweat in. Good enough that I fell asleep after a big dinner for about 1.5 hours.
I had yogurt for breakfast and cheated with 2 soft tacos from Taco Bell for lunch, but had a pretty good old school dinner called Bulgogi (bull-go-guy), which is a Korean beef stir fry with pear sauce. I haven't had this in quite some time, but it was very good and turned out better than I thought even though we had no garlic.
Recipe (Serves 4)
2 lbs of lean beef (I used chuck, which was fatty, but get a good chunk of meat, grill steaks work well also)
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup of sugar
12 garlic cloves
1/2 to 3/4 of onion
Asian pear (or just over 1 can of pears)
1/2 cup water
1 tbs of honey
Sesame Oil
Sesame seeds
black pepper
Step 1 - Freeze beef for about 2 hours. Then cut beef into as thin of strips as you can cutting across the grain of the meat. If you freeze it, it's easier to cut!
Step 2 - Making the sauce. Take soy sacue, sugar, garlic cloves, onion, pear(s), and water and grind it up in a processor or blender for about 30 seconds. Add honey and blend for another 30 seconds. It should kinda a nasty yellowish-brown color.
Step 3 - Take your beef strips and lightly coat with sesame oil. Coat the meat with black pepper and sesame seeds and then pour sauce over beef and leave to marinate for at least 3 hours. Over night works the best so the meat can soak up the sauce.
Step 4 - In a wok or deep fry pan you are going to fry basic stir fry veggies. You can cheat and buy a big bag, or buy fresh and chop it up. I like to include...
Carrots
red peppers
peas
green beans in pods
water chestnuts
Fry veggies at about 350 degrees and get them good and warm and take them out. Then crank up the wok to about 425 and cook up your marinated beef strips (strips should be about bite size). Make sure you've started your rice at this point also. I use Jasmine Rice, it's authentic Asian white rice and is the best rice you can buy IMO. Jasmine takes about 30 minutes to make and your veggies and meat are going to take about the same. It's a sticky rice so don't be worried you messed up and it's in a big clumpy ball. I'll make 3 cups worth of rice, which means you need 4.5 cups of water to 3 cups rice if you use Jasmine (It's 1 cup to 1.5 cups ratio).
Once the beef is about done (20 minutes or so) add your veggies back in. You may have some sauce left over (especially if you don't marinate over night) and you may want to put a little of that in there to coat everything. Or, if you saved your pear juice add some of that too.
Make a rice bed and put stir fry over and enjoy your Bulgogi. In Korea they will replace the beef with dog sometime and it tastes exactly the same. Most of you reading this won't want to chop up your dog so stick with the beef. Trust me, it's easy to make and very flavorful.
Like Jesus, P90X lets you rest on Day 7. Looking forward to that, but after my first week I'm pretty happy with the results so far.
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