Chinese Food: Nostalgia and Desperation

I love Chinese food.  I mean, I love Chinese food. I liked American Chinese food before coming to China, and once in China, I definitely fell in love with Chinese cuisine.  However, once you come back to America, and go back to your local Chinese Takeout...well, it just isn't the same.  If you live near a big city, of course you can probably find a few authentic Chinese restaurants that sell some of what you ate while you were in China, but I have not had a lot of luck locating said restaurants in my hometown.

Therefore, I have had this idea sort of cooking around in my brain for the past few months...emphasis on cooking.  I figure, I know what it is supposed to taste like, right?  Can't I just play around with some of the simple dishes until I get the flavor right?

Big Plate Chicken, Egg and Tomatoes, and Duck Noodles

Now, I am by no means a cook.  In fact, it hasn't been until the last year or so that I dared anything more creative than boiling water.  But I have been watching.  I have been watching Chinese people cook, I have been watching my fellow foreign teachers cook (I cook with them, but my skills are limited to mashed potatoes and corn), and over the past six months of being home, I have been watching (and sometimes helping) my mom cook.  And I have been learning.  I stayed for a week in my grandmothers house and managed to tolerably cook a chicken breast, rice, and a veggie.  Armed with such success, I turned again to the notion of trying to recreate some of my favorite Chinese dishes.

However, I still did not take that culinary leap until today.  Just the other day, I was talking on the phone with a former foreign teacher friend of mine, and I was bemoaning my lack of Chinese cuisine in my daily life.  He took it upon himself to assign me a homework assignment (teachers, sheeeesh!).  He told me that I had a month to recreate my favorite dish: Yuxiang Qieze...or fish-scented eggplant--which is a lot yummier than it sounds! I made a lot of excuses about not being able to find the right seasonings, that I couldn't cook, blah blah blah.  Then I got kind of annoyed with myself: I was essentially bitching about the lack of something I wanted, but not taking any practical steps to fix it.  So, I accepted this food challenge.

I did not want to start with Yuxiang Qieze...it seems complicated.  Instead, I decided to start with my second favorite dish: Eggs and Tomatoes.  The very next night, I took myself to the store and bought a ton of eggs and tomatoes, and chopped green onions.  I armed myself with looking up variations of the tomato and egg recipe, along with watching a YouTube video explaining how to make it.  I figured if I messed this one up, I would abandon my quest towards fish-scented eggplant...but if I succeeded....well, maybe I would have one less reason to miss China.

Needing proof, I had my father help me turn it into a video, which is posted at the bottom of the blog. It was touch and go for a little while there (see about 5:40) and I was pretty anxious the whole time that it would taste terrible.  And while it did not taste 100% like the dish I ate on an almost daily basis in Hangzhou, it tasted pretty darn good.  I think the variation in taste can be attributed to the use of different oils and seasonings.  This just means that I will have to play around with it a little bit more, now that I know that I can make it.

If you want to see me struggle for ten minutes, watch the above video.  If you want to see how this is actually made, I recommend this lady's video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRfLNGE2YUo. She does a great job showing you how to make it and I combined her recipe with some others I found online. You can also run a Google search on Chinese egg and tomato dish, and you should come up with several variations on the same recipe.  Wish me luck on my next culinary excursion!