Why Hello there, and welcome to Kitchen Catastrophes, where one man fights on, and waxes off. I’m your Daniel-San of the Dining Dojo, Jon O’Guin, and that was a mess of metaphors. I really shouldn’t have decided to put off working on the blog because “I’m having a really productive day!” Looks like you aren’t anymore, bucko! Anywhoodle, we’re making stir-fry, it’s got eggs, it’s got tomatoes, and if you don’t want to talk about it, just click this link. If you DO, let’s dig in.

A Messy Little Thing called Hugs

I warn you now: that Title line has NO relevance to this section as I am currently struggling to envision it, Title Jon just went fully off the rails, so that’s something to be concerned about. So, what earth-shaking, history re-defining truth will we learn about Tomato-and-Egg stir fry?

Ummm…nothing?

John Cena’s music, played on Kazoo

Like, look, today’s dish is formally named 西红柿炒鸡蛋,or, Romanized, Xīhóngshì chǎo jīdàn, (Hopefully. at least. Like, I don’t read Simplified Chinese. For all I know, I just accepted an EULA.) which translates to “Tomato Scrambled Eggs”. That’s it. There’s no big flashy name or history. The dish is not named for some Emperor, nor does it have some big historical usage. But it has something else: Mass appeal. See, EVERY source I have read agreed about one thing regarding this dish: it is HUGE in China, and among Chinese immigrant families. Like, it is the go-to comfort food dinner for millions of people around the world. And I think that’s one of the reasons you don’t see it a lot in discussions of Chinese food or new takes on things: it’d be like saying “I have a bold new take on Peanut-Butter and Jelly Sandwiches” or “to understand American cuisine, you’ve got to understand Kraft Macaroni and Cheese”. And don’t get me wrong: I can do both of those things (indeed, I’ve just been reminded that “a bold new take on PB&J” was a discussion I had in December and forgot to follow-up on) but they’re not exactly calling out to be made.

You wanna know how boring the history is? According to Wikipedia, tomatoes first became popular in China in “the late Qing dynasty”. The Qing dynasty ran from around 1640 to 1912. You know when tomatoes were introduced to Europe? 1550. You know when they really got popular? The late 1800’s. So…yeah, basically the same time everyone else started getting into it. It didn’t really pick up in Chinese HOMES until the 40’s or so, but it was showing up in Shanghai restaurants. Which, now that I think about it, I wonder if there was some interplay with the Lousong Soup crowd…Because there’s actually a fair amount of disagreement on the textural component on this dish: some versions, it’s just sliced tomatoes “cooked until tender”, while others talk about how it almost borders on a soup or stew, with the eggs sitting in a tomato jus.

Look, if you’re telling me we’re in a Chinese-Shakshuka situation, I’m down. I just need guidance.

So I guess the only thing to really talk about is the famously LEAST appealing part of a food blog (at least to the casual visitor): the personal stuff. If this dish isn’t super well known, and doesn’t have an amazing backstory, why did I decide to make it? The answer is…frustrating.

Simple isn’t the Same as Stupid. Or Easy

The answer to the question “why did I decide to make this” has multiple answers, because, as our Patrons know: this took 6 months to make. Last September, I wrote in a Patreon post that we still had a LOT of eggs from the chickens, and that I needed a way to use them up. And that month, Cook’s Illustrated had a recipe for “Stirfried Tomato and Eggs”. So I said “hey, convenient!”, bought a can of tomatoes, and then ended up having to  cast and direct a play , and then fell into what I certainly hope was like, seasonal depression. I say that because January/February felt like agony in terms of my mental and physical energy, and I’m hope that I’m now bouncing back.

Which is hilarious, because guess who else has bounced back.

Please don’t try to bounce chickens. They have bones.

Yes, the chickens have started laying again, and over the past three days I gathered...34 eggs? Not that they LAID that many in that time, no, this has been like, over 2 weeks where we didn’t know they had all started laying again. (we knew NICK was, because chickens will really only do the squat she’s doing in that picture when they’re laying eggs) I happened to find Nick stuck outside the coop on Saturday, and, opening the coop to help her get to bed, found dozens of eggs.

So, to cap off Meatless March, I decided to revisit the recipe I “started” in September, since the canned tomatoes were still present, we now had another wave of fresh eggs, and hey: it’s a way to explore the world of Vegetarianism in a distinctly different way than the previous ones: We’ve done three vegan recipes, and one with dairy, so let’s wrap up with some eggs. And hey, this is our last post before Easter, so eggs are kind of fitting.

The process is pretty easy…which is why it is particularly frustrating that it ran into the “O’Guin Home Stretch”, also known as “Jon Kitchen Time”: for some reason, there’s just an ongoing issue of seemingly 1 out of every 3 or 4 tasks just doubles or triples in time needed. Several months ago, I found some LED lights that I suggested my mom might want in the garage. She decided she instead wanted them in the game room, and bought two of them. And they then sat, in the game room, uninstalled, for…probably around 6 months, actually. Well, about a month ago one of the bulbs burned out, and I decided “hey, this is a great opportunity to force us to install the new light!” I looked at the instructions, figured they’d take about 15-20 minutes. I brought it up with my mother, who independently assessed that it would take around 15-20. Then, a few days later, I asked her to help me install it (a process she decided to take over, being a licensed electrician)…and it took us about 45 minutes.

It’s now a blinding beam of light, so that’s something.

This recipe, similarly, SAYS it takes 10 minutes, but it requires a bit of prep, so I figured “let’s treat it as if it takes 30 minutes”. Though the COWARDS that run their website have magically changed the cooking time to 25 minutes since I made it, meaning that I was roughly on-point… but we still got hit anyway.

It took 60 minutes and I had to cheat to make it THAT short. Which is good, because I started it 45 minutes before I had to be on a Zoom call, so I was NOT a happy camper as it wrapped up. (In my slight defense, my family’s schedule has turned into a shit-show of ‘trying to get mom and Nate to just be in the house at the same time to EAT FOOD I MAKE’ is a fucking agony: Nate has taken up exercising with a friend basically every night we don’t have standing dinner plans…meaning he doesn’t get home until mom has already gone to bed, and then he fills every Saturday with a hike, or a trip to see friends who live north of Seattle, so it feels like the ONLY time I have a better than 60% chance to get them both in the house at the same time every week and willing to eat is like, Sundays between 1 and 4 PM. In THEIR defense: nothing stops me from making food without them/without one of them. I just find it more validating to have multiple opinions.)

So, how did this process take twice as long? Let’s break down how I spent 60 minutes on only 10 ingredients.

My Soul is Scrambled

We of course have to start with mise en place, and today’s recipe has what I think of as “the Chinese Mirepoix”: you need scallions, garlic, and ginger. The original recipe calls for 4 scallions, but the green onions we ended up using were HEFTY fellas.

Look at those thicc onyons.

So I went with 2 instead. You want to thinly slice the whites/light greens, and then chop the dark green parts into 1” segments. You’re using the whole green onion here. Then, you want some thinly sliced garlic cloves, and you want to grate some ginger. Since I was already kind of conked out, chopping the garlic and onions probably took me like, 5 minutes, which is abysmally slow for a professional cook time. I DID get to use one of my favorite aromatic tricks, the “ginger ice”. We’ve covered this before, but it turns out you can freeze fresh ginger, and just grate off the frozen block when you need some. It needs to be patted down a little, because it creates a LOT of empty space (I’d say that it easily triples in volume, so 1 tbsp of freshly grated frozen ginger will compress down to 1 tsp of actual grated ginger).

Then, I ran into a very dumb problem: the recipe. Specifically, that I couldn’t access the recipe on my phone because I couldn’t remember the account details (they’re auto-saved on my computer) so I had to run downstairs and take pictures of it from my computer, meaning that, as I was taking pictures of the cooking process, I was also making it take longer to check the recipe.

The other thing I needed to do was cheat. See, the recipe I was using relies on Shaoxing wine, which it appears I’ve never really talked about, so let me BRIEFLY handle that, and I’ll loop around and talk more about it some other time: A lot of recipes call for Shaoxing wine…and they’re technically lying. What they REALLY want is Liaojiu, which is predominantly CALLED Shaoxing in the West. Very basic summary: Shaoxing is a city, famous for its wine, which is made in a traditional Chinese style. Liaojiu is that same STYLE of wine, but heavily seasoned so it’s not good to drink straight, forcing you to cook with it. Irritatingly, there are two very close comparisons in the West, but they don’t overlap: sherry is a similarly popular wine for cooking, and has “cooking sherry” variants where they add a shit-ton of salt so if you try and drink it straight it will ruin your kidneys and make you sick, and Champagne is a specific TYPE of sparkling wine that a lot of people fail to distinguish from other sparkling wines. So Shaoxing is basically the Champagne of Chinese Sherries.

I feel like I need a drink after writing that sentence.

And, as that picture might suggest to you, I don’t have any. I always forget to grab it when I’m in Asian markets, because the recipes are always “Shaoxing wine (or dry sherry)”. You’re going to mix this wine with your eggs, along with some sesame oil and salt, in order to season them. And the number of eggs you’re using is one of the reasons I really wanted help eating this.

Behold my mighty legion. Leggion?

8 eggs is, in my opinion, too much for anyone not trying to get yoked (yolked?), and a couple of the measurements are just a little fiddly if you try and scale down the recipe. Besides, I always try to make the recipe fairly close to “right” the first time, before I start riffing on it. The other big, messy task for prepping is the tomatoes. While many recipes call for using just straight-up slices of tomato, this recipe calls for a whole can of them, drained, juice reserved* and cut into chunks.

Plum Tomatoes: The eggs of the fruit world.

The process of cutting around 15 tomatoes into 8 chunks, while trying to make sure tomato juice doesn’t flow over my counter, was a very engaging one that ate up a lot of time. But they’re also the last step of the mise en place. Once you have your eggs seasoned and beaten, you mix together your garlic, ginger, and the thinly sliced green onion with some oil, and it’s time to start cooking.

I used a skillet, because I have an electric stove, which are not the best for wok cooking. I also made the mistake of using our of our fancier non-stick skillets, which is a mistake because it becomes VERY HARD to see if the oil is shimmering.

I’m so glad this is pitch black except where it’s naturally sparkly. Makes it VERY easy to detect ripples in clear fluids on it.

Eventually, I figured it was, and started on the first step: scramble some eggs. Just pour your seasoned egg mixture in, and “constantly but slowly scrape the bottom and sides, until eggs form a cohesive mass”. It’s a very quick process, only about 90 seconds, so I didn’t have time to take a picture while also stirring and double-checking I had everything ready. But just cook the eggs, and then move them out of the pan into a bowl to wait while you work with the aromatics.

The grated ginger here looks a LOT like light miso.

Take your…I was going to call it “Manchurian Mirepoix”, but I legitimately don’t know if Manchuria uses the same aromatics as what we associate with ‘Chinese food’...Hmm. Google says “no”. Whatever. Take your Three G’s, and get them in the pan, heating and mashing for thirty seconds to a minute or so, until fragrant. And the next step I think I did wrong, so I’m going to warn you about it.

See, remember I did an asterisk earlier on “juice reserved”? That’s because I cannot imagine that the amount of juice I ended up adding is correct, for two very simple reasons. See, THIS is what the pan looks like after you add all the juices from the can to it.

So…closer to the shakshuka, then?

And that, according to this recipe, is supposed to be “completely dry” in five to seven minutes of cooking. That was probably at LEAST one and a half cups of liquid, meaning it would take about 30 minutes to completely boil it away, so there’s no chance in hell it would be ‘completely dry’ in 5 minutes. So I think when the recipe says “juice reserved”, it means the juices that are emitted as you chop the whole tomatoes, not “the liquid in the can”. So technically the instruction should be “1 can of whole tomatoes, drained, chopped into 1” chunks, juice reserved”. (though watching their video, it LOOKS like they might have just had a much thicker juice, as theirs ‘plops’ into the wok rather than really “pouring”.)

Because let me tell you, I BOILED this for over 15 minutes, and I still had TONS of liquid left. I poured off liquid into the sink, TWICE, and ended up just tossing the whole-shebang into a colander, because It was already 2:05 and my Zoom call started at 2. At this point, the head of my spatula flopped off, leading me to make my sixth noise of strangled fury, prompting my mother to come see why I was interrupting her dramas with my suffering. After about a minute, we decided the mixture was “dry enough”, and folded in the eggs and the bigger chunks of dark green scallion, cooking and breaking up any egg curds that seemed too big until the dish was supposedly done, about 1 minute later.

We scooped it into bowls, and, after a quick taste, I seasoned mine with pepper and salt.

This at least looks appetizing, if a little too yellow-toned.

The results were…frustrating. I think, of course, that I lost a lot of complexity and flavor with the “I need to drain this liquid” issue, but even with that, the dish was…fine. Like, it tastes pretty much how you’d expect it to taste: it’s egg and tomato. The eggs are a little more complex than usual, thanks to the wine and sesame oil, but if you’ve had ketchup on eggs, you’ve got a lot of the same flavors here: egg, tomato, acid, salt. My mother and Nate didn’t hate it, but didn’t love it, on the grounds that neither of them particularly likes chunks of tomato. I think If I had the time to really cook down the juice/infuse the aromatics, and break down the tomatoes a little more, it’d have been a better dish. And hey, this was a first attempt. And let’s not ignore the value, no doubt one of the great appeals of the dish. This is a dinner for 4 people that costs…What, $5.50 total? $2 for eggs, $2 for a big can of tomatoes, $1.50 for green onions, garlic, ginger, and a splash of sherry? (the sherry is more expensive upfront, of course, but can be used for tons of dishes. Or just to drink, if you get decent stuff.) It’s a recipe I can recommend on the grounds that if you don’t like it, you’ve lost almost nothing trying it.

THURSDAY: I PRESUMABLY ENACT SOME ELABORATE RUSE.

MONDAY: I DON’T KNOW. IT’S MY BROTHER’S BIRTHDAY, SO I’M TRYING TO SET UP SOMETHING FOR HIM.

Recipe

Stir-Fried Tomato and Eggs

Serves 4

Ingredients

                Aromatics

4 scallions, white parts sliced thin, green parts cut into 1-inch lengths (hold green parts for “frying”)

1 tbsps vegetable oil,

3 garlic cloves, sliced thin

2 tsps grated fresh ginger

                Eggs

8 large eggs

2 tbsps Shaoxing wine (liaojiu)  or dry sherry

1 tsp toasted sesame oil

½  tsp table salt

                Frying/tomatoes

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 (28-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, drained with (maybe not all the) juice reserved, cut into 1-inch pieces

2 teaspoons sugar

½ tsp table salt

Preparation

1. Combine all ‘aromatics’ in a small bowl; set aside. Whisk ‘eggs’ ingredients together in separate bowl.

2.  Heat remaining 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in 12-inch nonstick or carbon-steel skillet or 14-inch wok over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add egg mixture. Using rubber spatula, slowly but constantly scrape along bottom and sides of pan until eggs just form cohesive mass, 1 to 2 minutes (eggs will not be completely dry); transfer to clean bowl. 

3.  Add aromatics to now-empty pan and cook over medium heat, mashing mixture into pan, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add tomatoes and their juice, sugar, and remaining ½ teaspoon salt and simmer until almost completely dry, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in egg mixture and scallion greens and cook, breaking up any large curds, until heated through, about 1 minute. Serve.