Egg Foo Yung from Scratch

Hello again, and welcome. I want to share with you a recipe for vegetarian Egg Foo Yung. Egg Foo Yung's actual origin is debated by many, but at least we can agree that it is nutritious, tasty, and a well balanced, inexpensive vegetarian entree.

I'm in my early fifties, and one of my fondest eating memories is of the occasional visit to the exotic world of the 1960's era Chinese American Restaurant. The interiors, often dominated by images of dragons, the colors of deep red and gold, and the uncommon tones of Cantonese or Mandarin, drifting out into the dining area from the depths of the kitchen, combined to produce a wonderfully magical experience. As I grew older, and we moved from town to town, and from Chinese restaurant to Chinese Restaurant, many of my favorite dishes changed in the methods of preparation, but the one constant seemed to be Egg Foo Yung. This golden omelet patty, stuffed full of bean sprouts and water chestnuts and topped with a ladle of brown mushroom gravy always arrived at the table the way I remembered it, almost as if the same chef had followed me from town to town, in anticipation of my arrival.

It's no mystery, really. I've been able to reproduce the flavor of this dish, at least to my satisfaction, with four easily obtainable flavoring ingredients: ginger, garlic, shao xing wine(easily substituted with dry sherry,) and toasted sesame oil.

*I have chosen to omit water chestnuts from my recipe, because no matter how carefully I rinse them, they always seem to taste of can. If you don't find this to be true, then by all means, throw some into the mix.

Egg Foo Yung from Scratch

Ingredients:

8 eggs (please buy free range. A happy hen lays a tasty egg.)
4 handfuls of bean sprouts
2 green onions sliced very thinly
approximately 1 square inch peeled fresh ginger root grated or minced fine
2 cloves garlic peeled and minced fine
1 tablespoon flour
salt to taste
toasted sesame oil to taste
Shao xing wine to taste
a pinch of sugar
dash of soy sauce, or more to taste
(if you like a little bite, a finely chopped serrano pepper is nice but not necessary)
oil for frying

For the gravy:

8 tablespoons flour
7 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 cups water salted to taste to which is added a teaspoon of finely minced ginger, a dash of soy sauce and a tablespoon of shao xing wine
handful of standard white or brown mushrooms sliced
a little oil for sauteing the mushrooms

In a large bowl, put one tablespoon flour. Add one of your eggs and with a wire whisk, beat into the flour. Add remaining eggs and beat thoroughly. Add ginger, garlic, sugar, soy sauce, (and serrano pepper,) beating these into egg mixture.

Now add the sliced green onion and the bean sprouts, mixing thoroughly with a spoon.

Finally add salt to taste, beginning with one teaspoon, and proceeding cautiously, a tablespoon of wine, and at the last, mix in one teaspoon, or more, depending on taste, of the toasted sesame oil. As with the salt, be careful with this stuff, it sneaks up on you.

Let this mixture sit while you prepare the gravy:

Heat a little oil in a skillet, til smoke just begins to rise, and stir in the sliced mushrooms. Saute til nicely browned. While sauteing, season with a little salt, and pour off any resulting liquid into the salted water reserved for the gravy. If the mushrooms begin to stick, pour in a little shao xing, or sherry to deglase the pan. Set aside.

In a heavy pot large enough to accomodate four cups of water comfortably, heat your oil over a medium high heat. Add the flour and stir briskly. I use one of those stainless steel whisks with the widening coiled spring bottom, always maintaining contact with the bottom of the pot, stirring very quickly over the entire surface, and in this way I never burn my roux unintentionally.

Continue to stir the roux(flour and oil mixture) quickly, carefully observing the gradual change in color, from pale cream, to golden brown, to peanut butter, and finally to a stage just a little deeper brown in shade than peanut butter. At this point, remove the pan from the heat but continue your stirring for two minutes, or so. This is done for the following reasons: If you pour the reserved liquid directly into your roux without lowering its heat a bit, the possibility of a volcano like eruption is high. And if you don't continue stirring your roux after removing it from the heat, the mixture, which is extremely hot, will continue to cook and possibly burn.

After a couple of minutes, return the pot to the burner, and now with a spoon, rather than the whisk,
quickly stir in approximately 1/2 cup of your salted water. This will almost instantly form a thick paste, to which, while continuing to stir briskly, you will gradually pour in the remaining water. By the way, PLEASE be very careful when first pouring in the water. You must stir the water into the roux, but a great deal of steam will rise up from the pot as you do so. Please remove the spoon quickly from the pot for a moment as this occurs so you don't scald yourself.

Once you have integrated all the water into the roux, leave the pot on the burner and switch back again now to the whisk. Turn the heat up to high, and whisk the gravy up to a low boil. This should eliminate any thick lumps that appeared earlier. Now add the mushrooms, stir them in, and place the gravy on a low back burner. If the gravy is a bit too thick, add a little water, and always adjust your seasonings.

Mix Egg Foo Yung mixture thoroughly with spoon. In a heavy skillet, pour in cooking oil to 1/4 inch depth. Place skillet over medium high heat. When oil is hot, place handfuls of mixture in oil. If bean sprouts mound too high, pat down with spoon. Fry til golden brown on both sides, remove with spatula and drain on paper before serving on platter. Cover with gravy before serving, and bring a boat with remaining gravy to table.

This dish is great on its own, but with any companion Chinese restaurant dishes, and of course with steamed rice, even better. Don't forget the fortune cookies!

Best Wishes, Scratch

P.S. Accuracy note: Most Chinese sauces I've been served, or prepared myself, are closer to glazes than gravies, and usually produced using starches other than wheat. The Chinese American restaurant Egg Foo Yung mushroom gravy was probably, in my time, more often than not produced with a commercial gravy base heavy on beef stock and caramel coloring. Our recipe avoids the beef stock, of course, and comes by its coloring naturally. I read recently that In St. Louis Mo., a local favorite is the St. Paul Sandwich: an egg foo yung patty with gravy, served on a bun with dill pickle. Lettuce and tomato optional.