114. Hot and sour soup -- Northeast Chinese style (V)

Chinese hot and sour soup

… Eventually the long Chinese new year celebration is finished. I bet everyone in China is taking a break from all the cooking, eating, visiting, shopping… And the ashes from fireworks are being cleaned up -- I always find it bit sad when I see this, just like I don’t really like gatherings, because I don’t like to see when it’s finishing, families and friends are leaving. In Chinese, there is a saying ‘all the feasts will have to come to an end’. :(( However, the good thing is that we still have a year to look forward, and the spring is coming…

Anyway, we still need to talk about eating. :) Probably after a long feast, we should go for something simple. :) This recipe is hot and sour soup -- with clear soup base. I guess that you are not unfamiliar with the hot and sour soup served in Chinese take-aways and restaurants (outside China). Most of them are Cantonese style. For some time, I really liked it, but eventually I got really bad homesick and I started making  hot and sour soup northeast style. :)

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100. A typical Northeast Chinese dish --- “mess stew” with beef, tomato, aubergine and potato

As I was writing this post,  I realized that this my 100th recipe. :) I remember when I started writing, I was very worried if I was going to run out of recipes very shortly, but, hey, this is the number 100 now. :)) So thanks for my friends’ and family’s encouragement, and hope you enjoyed these recipes. :)

Ok, today’s recipe, a stewed dish. As I mentioned before, not everything in northeast Chinese cuisine is about stir-frying; the most representative dishes are actually stews. So here is one of the most common one -- “mess stew”.

-- Ha.. “Mess stew” is a direct translation from its original name in Chinese, “Luan dun”, which literally means "to put everything together to stew", without any particular "rules".
Different people, however, cook it differently. For example, if you look a bit around in the internet, you will find recipes that mix potato, pork, aubergine, green beans, cabbage, and many more things together. I have to admit that I have never tried this kind of mix before, in restaurants, it is almost impossible to find this dish, as it is so ‘homey’, so it is really difficult to say which ingredients are more ‘standard’.

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79. Chinese stir fried egg and tomato

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Chinese stir fried egg and tomato

Stir frying egg together with other ingredients is very common all across China. As I mentioned in my previous post (common ingredient: eggs), (chicken) eggs can be stir fried on their own, with different vegetables, or with certain kinds of fish and meat.

I like the combination of egg and tomato, but you have to get reasonably good tomatoes though, otherwise, that ‘raw’ sourness can put me off.


I never knew that stir fried egg and tomato was such a ‘basic’ dish, until my husband told me about his conversation with one of his Chinese colleagues, J. He asked J. if he could cook Chinese food, J. replied, ‘only very basic things, like stir-fried egg and tomato’. I really laughed, I did not know stir fried egg and tomato was such a basic Chinese dish. :)))

Ok, it is not difficult to make at all, I mean if you can get the right tomatoes, and add in the right amount of salt, you can never get it too wrong. However, only in recent years, I realized that there are tons of different versions of stir-fried egg and tomato in different regions of China, and it can even be different from household to household.

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69. Northeast Chinese soup with eggs, tomato and seaweed (V)

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Chinese tomato and egg soup

I woke up from a very weird dream this morning. In the dream, my memory only stopped in a ‘blur’ period around university time, I could not remember anything after that, what happened or even who I was.

In my dream, people sat around me, asked me what I did, where I lived, if I was married… I tried so hard to remember, but all I came up with was I worked hard to finish my PhD, but I had no idea why and where I did it or what subject I did it, and what I did after that; I remembered I could paint, but did not remember what I painted, why I painted; I was married, and I could see my husband sitting next to me, but nothing recalled how we met, and why he spoke Spanish…

I was panicking,

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6. Chinese recipe: Hong Lu Deng (stir fry potato, green pepper, tomato)

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红绿灯

Chinese stir fried potato, green pepper and tomato

Chinese hong lu deng

Ha, ha… If I tell you the meaning of this dish in Chinese, you are going to laugh…. :)) Hong Lv Deng literally means ‘green and red light’ (Hong as red, Lu as green, and deng as light), it normally refers to ‘traffic light’ in Chinese. I have no idea how people first came up with this name, I would guess it must have been only after traffic lights were first used in China!  :))

I cannot think of any dishes that deserve the adjective ‘home made’ more than this one. I don’t think I have ever cooked it for my friends: it is not a ‘super fancy’ dish that I can proudly present to my guests, but it is perfect for a cozy home dining table. :))

It is a very easy-to-cook dish. In fact, it is the very first Chinese dish my lovely ‘him’ learned to cook, and now he became an expert in cooking it. :))

Ok, the dish is made up with (yellowish) potato, green pepper and red tomato.

The recipe: Hong lu deng

Ingredients

Vegetables:

Potato (I use 2-3 medium size Maris Piper potato, it is easy to get the potato soft just before it goes completely mashy.)

Green pepper, one
(As I mentioned before, if you can get the ‘Italian green pepper’ with much thinner skin, it would be great.)

Tomato, two medium size--- Honestly, I am not a big fun of the tomato in the market here, it is difficult to cook in stir-fry dishes at least. I love those that are less juicy, but firmer and more ‘mashy’ inside for cooking, probably it is only because I grew up with that kind, so when I found the same ones in Spain and Italy, you cannot imagine how many of them I ate ... to a point .. I ended up with a horrible stomachache. :)) So here, I use vine tomato, I think the taste is better.

Veg oil (/soy oil), 5 (or 13) spices powder or Spiced water, sichuan pepper powder, salt, white sugar, cooking wine, vegetable essence or MSG (both optional)

Preparation

Peel and chop the potato into thin slices.
Slice the green pepper and tomato.

Stir-frying

1) Place the wok on medium to strong fire, pour in 4-6 table spoons of veg oil.

2) Put quarter tea spoon of sichuan pepper powder and couple of tea spoons of cooking wine in the oil.

 3) Put sliced potato in, mix well with pepper powder. Stir constantly until the potato is softening down. (This can be checked by the change colour of the potato or just use the cooking utensils to give a touch, see if it is soft enough.) Often potato can get dry in the wok, in this case, put a bit water in, or just spiced water.

4) Before potato gets completely soft, put sliced green pepper and tomato in.

5) Let the green pepper and tomato sit for one minute, then put quarter tea spoon of 5 spice powder in (if only you did not put spiced water in in step 3, otherwise skip this,) a bit more than half tea spoon of salt, 1 - 2 tea spoons of light soy sauce, a small pinch of white sugar (to balance the ‘sourness’ from tomato). Mix everything well.

6) Put one-third tea spoon of vegetable essence (or MSG if you like, both optional).
Leave the things in the wok for a bit, until the potato is completely soft, even a bit ‘mashie’, the green pepper is a bit soft, but still crunchy, and tomato gets really soft, juice of tomato becomes nice sauce of the dish-- now, done!

The taste of the dish is --- a bit ‘sour’ from the tomato, a bit ‘mashed’ potato soaked in tomato juice with crunchy green pepper…. Very good to go with boiled rice…. o, You know, I really like the sauce mix the boiled rice.. :))