Cooking Part 1

I like to cook but haven’t done it in a long time since restaurants are just so dang good, cheap and convenient. After the rice incident however, I decided that instead of relying on ayi and peanut butter and jelly for meals in my apartment, I should try my hand at making stuff myself.

This post, and possibly others to follow, is going to attempt to chronicle my cooking experiences with the intent of showing that decent tasting Chinese-style food is pretty easy (and usually cheap) to make. Before I start, a few shout outs are in order.  First is to my friend Ling back in the states who was the first person to introduce me to Chinese cooking and show me that isn’t difficult once you try it. The second is the inspiration for this post, the riceagain.com blog. It has a lot of recipes posted, one of which I used and will be giving my account of later on. One thing to note: if you are the type that likes to follow recipes exactly while measuring out amounts carefully this will not appeal to you. “A little” of something or “some” of this are about the most accurate descriptions you’ll get, sorry.

Fried Egg and Tomato

On Thursday, I was having some Chinese friends over and wanted to make food for them. The first dish I made was the first Chinese dish I learned to make (taught to me by Ling), fried egg and tomato. Almost anybody who’s been to China has encountered this dish but its rarely seen, if at all, in Chinese restaurants in the states. (I will save a talk about the disparity between the Chinese food in China and the Chinese food in America for another day but let me just say that the lukewarm kung pao chicken that’s been sitting on the buffet line at the Dragon Palace for half a day is a poor, poor representation)

Ingredients: Oil, chopped garlic, chopped green onion, eggs, diced tomatos ~1 inch chunks, chicken bouillon granules

Get a little oil hot in a wok or skillet (med-high heat maybe), add the chopped garlic and green onion and fry them (I think the technical term is saute but don’t quote me on that) for a little bit until the garlic starts turning a golden color. Then add the eggs to the oil/garlic/onion mix, things are going to get a little exciting with the sizzling and what not. Don’t get too nervous because in your anxiety you may drop an egg all over the stove and that is pain to clean up.  Trust me, avoidance of this occurring is preferable.

Another thing to avoid is stirring the eggs too much. They shouldn’t be beat to death, just mixed thoroughly. Once the eggs are pretty much cooked, stir in the tomatoes and sprinkle on some chicken bouillon.

The reason for the bouillon I used to think was that it was a substitute for MSG but Wikipedia informed me that it’s just because bouillon has a crapload of MSG in it. It may be bad for you but it sure tastes good. You could probably use salt instead. The tomatoes will cook down and the juice from them will make nice sauce. Keep on cooking and lightly stirring until the sauce gets thick.

It is really hard to go wrong with this dish and there are lots of variations to it as well like adding other chopped vegetables like green or hot peppers, carrots, potatoes, beans, etc. In the picture above you can see that I went a little too crazy with the stirring and the egg chunks are too small. Also, I wasn’t patient to let the sauce boil down and it was pretty runny. The thing is, it still tasted really good and to me that’s all that matters. If you talk to a Chinese person they will probably say it was the worst egg and tomato they’ve seen because presentation and texture and stuff like that is important to them. Whatever.

Coca-Cola Chicken

Not authentic Chinese so don’t go asking for it if you ever visit here but it’s definitely Chinese-ish. This is the recipe that I got from Rice Again. I’m not going to add much except to heed the warning to make sure you chop the ginger up big so you can take it out later unless you want a big, strong-tasting surprise while you are tearing away at your wings. I also used Pepsi instead of Coke because that was what the waitress gave me in place of a receipt one night at supper (another story) and I didn’t use honey because I didn’t have any. The wings ended up tasting really good but I would suggest actually using the honey to add some sweetness.

Both of these dishes were really easy to make and when combined with rice are plenty to eat for a few people. Unfortunately my friends called and canceled on me right as the Pepsi was almost done boiling down so I had to eat for three. Now that I think of it that wasn’t unfortunate after all…