Saturday, January 9, 2010

Egg Foo Yung

Looking for egg foo yung? This is one of my very early, stream-of-consciousness recipes. If you're looking for more precision, I have more egg foo yung here and here.

Or, continue reading for my first foo.


Saturday.

Today started with me knowing that I'd have to do a little work today, but a quick scan of email held the good news that I'd won a prize from my favorite cooking-related website, Serious Eats. So that cheered me up a bit.

And it's always a good day when I'm planning on baking a loaf of bread. I don't know what it is about bread, but it makes me happy to see it change so many times during the mixing, rising and baking.

Better yet, I didn't need to worry about getting the loaf done and cooled in time for dinner, so there was plenty of time for leisurely rising. When the dough came out of the bowl after the second rise, it smelled wonderful, and I was glad I gave it the extra time.

On the other hand, the yogurt that I had prepped the night before hadn't set up. After the fact, I realized that the last time I bought milk from the local dairy, I had yogurt-making problems. So I gave it another shot of culture and let it sit some more. I don't think it's any better, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with a half-gallon of liquid yogurt. I suppose I can bake with it, but that's a lot of yogurt to use up. And meanwhile, I still have no fresh yogurt.

Oh well.

I had a little errand-running to do, and stopped in at my favorite store in town, a kitchen supply place called Cayenne Kitchen. If I ever lose my mind and wander around town lost, that's probably where they'll find me, ogling the gadgets or the bakeware.

Dinner tonight was egg foo yung, from a recipe I got from an adult-ed cooking class about a thousand years ago. Or it seems that long.

Basically, it's this:

Egg Foo Yung

  • Six eggs, beaten just enough to mix
  • 1 cup finely chopped onion and celery
  • 1 can (of unknown size) bean sprouts.

Sigh. Bean sprouts come in 2 different sized cans. This recipe didn't specify. I think they wanted the larger, and I had the smaller, so I ended up adding extra veg and more flour (see below) to make up it work. And if I had been able to buy fresh sprouts or I thought far enough ahead to sprout my own, I would have done that. But no, I had canned bean sprouts and canned chop suey veg.

  • 1/2 cup diced cooked meat, canned shrimp, or whatever

I had leftover char sui pork, so that what went in there. I used more than a half cup, though.

  • Flour, for thickening.
  • Oil, for frying.
  • Seasonings, to taste. 

Considering this was way back in the stone age, Accent (monosodium glutamate) was suggested, along with soy and/or salt. Since the pork was pretty well seasoned, I didn't add anything else.

Recipe says to mix the ingredients, sprinkle on about a tablespoon of flour and fry in a frying pan with a tablespoon or so of oil. Well, the flour wasn't enough to make the egg mixture less soupy, so I added the extra veg and some flour until it looked like it would behave properly in a frying pan.

Recipe also says to use stock thickened with cornstarch to make a sauce. Nuh uh. You need soy in the sauce, too, to make it like the takeout stuff. So I used the liquid still left from the char sui, and added soy and cornstarch.

The Egg Foo Yung was pretty darned good. I might make some more tomorrow, since there's still some pork left over, and I made plenty of rice to go with.
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