Stir-fried Tomato and Egg

Two ingredients cooked separately and brought back together, where the eggs leave the pan before the tomatoes go in.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg.

Ingredients

• 5 eggs
• 4 ripe tomatoes, about 500 g
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons flavourless oil
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1 spring onion, sliced

Method

1. THE EGGS COME OUT BEFORE THE TOMATOES GO IN. Cooked together, the egg sits in tomato water, goes grey and turns to a wet scramble. Cooked apart and rejoined at the end, it stays in soft gold curds with the sauce around them rather than through them. This is the dish, and it is the step most often skipped.
2. THE SUGAR IS NOT OPTIONAL AND IS NOT THERE TO SWEETEN. Tomatoes cooked hard turn sharp, and two teaspoons pulls that back without ever being tasted as sugar. Left out, the dish is thin and acidic.
3. Eggs beaten with half the salt and the tablespoon of water. The water turns to steam in the pan and lifts the curds.
4. Tomatoes cut into six wedges each. The skins can be slipped off with a scored cross and 30 seconds in boiling water, but left on they hold the wedges together.
5. Two tablespoons of oil in a wok over the highest heat you have, until it shimmers. Eggs in all at once.
6. Count to five without touching them, then push the set edges to the middle and let the raw egg run underneath. 40 seconds in all. THEY SHOULD LEAVE THE PAN LOOKING SLIGHTLY UNDERDONE, because they finish in the residual heat and again when they go back in.
7. Eggs out onto a plate.
8. Last tablespoon of oil, tomatoes in cut side down. Left 1 minute without stirring so they catch, then stirred and cooked 3 to 4 minutes until they slump and give up their liquid.
9. Sugar and the rest of the salt in. The liquid bubbled and reduced by about a third, until it looks glossy rather than watery.
10. Eggs back in, broken into large pieces with the spatula and turned through twice only. More than that and they shred.
11. Spring onion over, straight out of the pan onto rice.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under China · All recipes