A few days ago I tried to make homemade pork egg foo young.
I got all the elements, except for the sake for the gravy. “Like I would have sake,” I scoffed. “But I know I have mirin.” And then while hunting for the mirin at the top of the liquor shelf, what was there? Huge bottle of sake.
It made me happy to have forgotten it. So happy that I started to look forward to senility. I’ve already had the pleasure of finding the perfect Christmas decorations forgotten in the basement. Perhaps old age is just like that, all the time. I can easily see forgetting that I can play the guitar and then picking it up ‘for the first time’ very easily.
I made the gravy first, and it was a dream. Tasty, full of sake, thickened perfectly. And then of course I found I had forgotten the most important thing about Chinese restaurant food, it is a fool’s game to try to imitate Chinese restaurant food.
My recipe called for me to put 2T peanut oil in my wok and sautee and I would be fine. No. After a very disappointing outcome I researched what I had done wrong, and what I should have done was to fling the egg batter into my industrial deep-fat fryer. Because THAT is how you make egg foo young.
The gravy saved it, though. Ordering Chinese for lunch anyway so I can get the yen for egg foo young out of my head.
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