Black Pepper Sauce goes well with anything.

Very few things make me nostalgic about anything concerning my childhood. But I have to say that black pepper sauce is of those things that elicit childhood memories.

One of the only childhood memories I have with my dad involves black pepper sauce. We didn't eat well growing up, neither parent had the inclination to bother, and we didn't have the $ to eat out with any regularity.

But, sometime between the age of 4-6, for whatever reason, my mother had one of her extended absences abroad. I don't precisely remember why my brother wasn't around, but somehow my dad and I ended up at a "steakhouse."

Keep in mind, this was in the mid-late 1980s, and Taiwan had barely just emerged from under martial law, we didn't really have THAT much culinary contact with the outside world, so "steaks" were really more like sad little cuts of beef from an old water buffalo or maybe an old cow. It definitely wasn't one of them fancy American or Australian imported steaks.

But it was cheap. For something like $2.50 USD, the "steak" came to your table sizzling on a hotplate, with black pepper sauce, with an egg (sunny side up), vegetables, and pasta. And not just any regular pasta (which we had plenty of in Taiwan), but WESTERN extruded pasta (i.e. macaroni). WOW!

I was a child, and didn't really know how to use this strange WESTERN knife and fork business (where's my chopstick?), so I spent about 90 minutes gnawing on this rather dry little "steak" that sat in a puddle of black pepper sauce. I distinctly remember how proud my dad was that I had finished this thing, even if it took 90 minutes (or maybe it was relief? I was a kid, who knows!).

Objectively speaking the steak was dry and old beef, but for me that was one of the more memorable meals.

With that old country tale being told, let me get to the actual cooking.

You can make your own black pepper sauce, but I didn't bother. I endorse Lee Kum Kee's black pepper sauce. It works, and you can find it at any respectable East Asian food mart.

I sliced an onion. Sauteed it in an oiled skillet at medium-high heat until they're brown, then added a pound of bite-sized chicken.

You can use lamb, beef, or whatever protein that builds your muscles. Saute until the surface of the protein is cooked, and add your vegetables. We opted for peas.

Add some chicken stock, some pepper sauce, and bring the mixture to a boil. Simmer for 20 minutes.

You can eat it over rice, or chose to do the "Western" thing and eat it over some rotini.

Yum!