Shrimp Egg Fu Yung

With my home grown bean sprouts, I've decided to make the classic Chinese-American dish Egg Fu Yung.

Egg Fu Yung is essentially an omelet with lots of vegetables and a meat. I would typically use ham, but I wanted to try something different today so I picked shrimp.

Any type of vegetables will work, but bean sprouts, onion, celery are the primary veggies. You can cut the veggies anyway you like, chopped, sliced, diced, minced...etc.

The fixins:

1/2 Zucchini, chopped
1/3 carrot, chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1/3 cup bell pepper, chopped
3 big mushrooms, rough chop
1 to 1.5 cups beans sprouts
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
4 eggs, beaten

15 shrimp (31/35), deveined and split and cut into thirds
1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
dash of white pepper
pinch of salt

1. Shrimp marinaded with a little soy sauce (about 1/2 teaspoon, a dash of white pepper and a pinch of salt)

The vegetables


2. I like precooking the ingredients so the omelet part is mainly cooking the egg. First I partially cooked the shrimp, about 3 to 5 minutes. Afterwards the shrimp was taken out and the vegetables and the rest of the seasonings were added. I was mainly sweating the vegetables and steam with a little chicken broth, about 5 minutes. Another reason for cooking the vegetables is to get rid of the "raw" flavor from the bean sprouts.

The vegetables were taken out of the saute pan, mixed in a bowl and allowed to cool. At this point, I could have made another American classic, Chop Suey, by just making a sauce, but my goal was Egg Fu Yung.


When the mixture cooled sufficiently, I added the beaten eggs to the vegetable mixture.
I used a measuring cup, 1/3 C, to pour the mixture into a frying pan. I, also, could have just made one big omelet but my preference is for smaller individual Egg Fu Yung.

Cooking at Medium to Medium-High



About 3 to 5 minutes, flipped the patties.


Finally when they were all done. I topped with an Egg Fu Yung sauce.

Egg Fu Yung Sauce (Ref: Sunset Oriental Cookbook, 1994)
1 cup of chicken broth
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
1 Tbl corn starch
1 Tbl soy sauce
2 Tbl water

Bring the chicken broth to boil. Dissolve the other ingredients in a small bowl.
When the broth boils, stir in the rest of the ingredients. The mixture should be fully thick when the sauce comes to a boil

The Final Dish:
Egg Fu Yung with Sauce


Overall, the vegetables were still had a slight crunch and the taste was good. The bean sprouts turned out nice.

There was about 3 cups of the vegetable shrimp mixture. I could have used 3 eggs instead of 4 so the patties aren't as eggy. Also, the vinegar seemed pretty strong in the sauce so I will probably use 1 teaspoon instead of 2 the next time around.

I forgot to add/buy green onions. Green onions would have added a little extra flavor.

Home Grown Bean Sprouts

We must be getting close to Spring. I think the gray and wet winter is causing me to get a little restless. I'm wanting to grow my own food or at least make an attempt to grow my own food. I'm eager to get outside and enjoy a little sunshine.

Presently, it's raining and the forecast is for rain and cloudy weather for the next few days.

Here's a project I can do indoors and supposedly it only takes four days, growing bean sprouts.

Refs:
Walton Feed - Sprout Information

Oregon State University - Bean Sprout Info

Bean sprouts, the whitish sprouts often found in the supermarket and used in Chinese food, are sprouted mung beans. Mung beans are little green beans about the size of a bb.

March 14, 2008 - Evening
I don't know if these will work since it isn't seed stock. It's just a bag of beans I bought at the store. I figure they should work since they are dried beans.


I sorted out the beans that were broken and looked too dry or wrinkly.
I measured out 1/4 cup which weighed 1.7 ounces (50 grams).


The next step is to soak the beans overnight.


March 15, 2008:
Morning - After a night of soaking, the mung beans were placed in a strainer and rinsed.
Morning Photo - Soaked overnight


I water filled ziploc bag, 2.33 cups of water, on top of the beans. Supposedly, the weight helps the sprouts grow bigger and thicker. According to the OSU website the pressure should be 0.5 ounce per sq in.

Doing the math!
The strainer I'm using is about 7" diameter at the base so that works out to 38.5 sq. inches at 0.5 ounce per sq. inch gives a total weight of 19.4 ounces. 1 cup of water is about 8 ounces in weight so it works out to 2.4 cups (2.33 is close enough).



Evening - I've rinsed twice today since placing the soaked beans in a strainer. Once in the afternoon and once this evening.

Much to my surprise, the beans are sprouting! This is just a little over 24 hours since I started this project.

Evening Photo - Sprouting!


March 16, 2008:
Continued the soak and rinse regimen - morning, early evening and evening.

Evening - Sprouts getting longer (1/4" to 3/8" long)


March 17, 2008:
Same watering schedule

Evening - Roots are about 3/4" to 1" long. Also the greenish hulls are falling off.


March 18, 2008:
Morning - Allowing the sprouts to soak about 5 to 10 minutes. Also, picked out the empty mung bean hulls.

Evening - Roots are about 1.5" to 2" long.
I may be over watering. I've been soaking the sprouts a little longer in the morning instead of just rinsing. The roots seem to be browning.



March 19, 2008:

Twice a day watering. Morning and Evening. Also, added a paper towel between the sprouts and the water bag.

Evening - Roots are about 2" long.


March 20, 2008:

Morning: Light soak to float out the hulls.

Evening: Washed the bean sprouts and aired out to dry a little. I don't have a salad spinner. Afterwards, the sprouts were refrigerated.

Sprouts are long, maybe 3", but the thick, meaty portion of the roots are about 1" to 1.5". I let the sprouts go 6 days to see if they would plump up a little more, but felt that this was long enough. Any longer I was concerned the roots would damp out.


The Numbers:
Initial: Dry Seeds used was 1/4 cup which weighed 1.7 ounces or 50 grams.
Final: Washed and drained spouts weighed 7.9 ounces or 223 grams.

Rereading the reference websites, I'll eventually give it another try to see if I can increase the plumpness. However, the first batch is sitting in the fridge until I figure out what to do with them.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Today, everyone is a little bit Irish.
The traditional dinner in the USA used to celebrate St. Patrick's Day is corned beef and cabbage.

A couple years ago I made my own corned beef from scratch. It turned out very good with more flavor than the store bought corned beef. However, I didn't have the time to make one from scratch so I bought one from Costco. I like the one's from Costco. They don't seem as salty as the inexpensive on-sale corned beef at the local supermarket.

Cooking is simple
Put the brisket in a big pot of water and boil/simmer for 2 to 2.5 hours.

Cabbage - some people like to boil separately, but I like to add the cabbage the last 15 minutes (sooner or later for desired tenderness) into the corned beef liquid. The same with the carrots.

Potatoes - Boiled with the corned beef the first 30 minutes. Afterwards, I removed the potatoes from the liquid, cut them into cubes. Added salt, pepper and some chopped onions. Coated with olive oil and a couple pats of butter.
Finally, I roasted the potatoes in the oven 375 F for the last 30 minutes.
By roasting, I wanted some add texture to the meal instead of having a fully boiled mushy meal.

The Final Dish
Sliced corned beef, a wedge of cabbage, carrots, roasted potatoes, rustic olive bread I found at the supermarket and a dollop of horseradish to add a little kick.
Overall a simple meal to prepare where the brisket was very moist and not too salty.

Beef Roast

Today was a beef roast day.

Purchased a Beef Chuck Mock Tender Roast.
Chuck is from the front shoulder area of a cow/bovine. Those muscles are well worked on an animal so it is usually considered to be a "less tender" cut of beef.

I was asking myself "What is mock tender"? Mock is to imitate or pretend so does mock tender mean "pretend tender" which is tough?

It looked like a good cut - single muscle, boneless and inexpensive. Also, it had the word tender in it. Did I fall for a marketing ploy? lol :-)

I trimmed the exterior fat and membrane/silver skin. I hope I didn't over do it.
After I trimmed the roast, it clicked that maybe mock tender means "mock tenderloin"? The trimmed roast does have a tenderloin shape to it.

Sprinkled the roast with a little salt. about 1 teaspoon of kosher salt. It really wasn't too much salt.
A few grinds of black pepper and a light coating of olive oil (about 1 to 2 teaspoons). I hoped the oil would replace the fat that I cut off in terms of browning.


Baked at about 200F for 4 hours. I measured the temperature and it was 140F which the low end of medium. I used the philosophy for tough cuts of meat - low and slow. Low temperatures for a long time (slow). My concern was that I'd end up with beef jerky.

The roast shrank a lot and looks a little jerky like.


I chopped up about 1/2 cup of onion, 1/2 teaspoon shallot and 1 cup of mushrooms.

Sweated the onions and shallot in olive oil and a little butter. Afterwards, I added the mushrooms and a pinch of thyme.

When the mushrooms cooked down, I poured in the beef jus and a 1/4 c water to rinse out the baking dish. I, also, added a couple drops of Kitchen Bouquet

I let the mixture cook down.

With an electric slicer, I sliced the beef thinly and topped it with the onion-mushroom mixture. The beef turned out medium/medium-well. I lucked out. The 4 hours was just the amount of time I spent at work and my drive home.


But there's more!
I had a bottle of Johnny's French Dip Au Jus so I made some per the directs.

The Final Dish:
I main craving for today was actually a French Dip Sandwich.

I toasted a ciabatta roll, dipped in the au jus, added a light coating of mustard and mayo. The onion-mushroom "relish" added an additional beefiness to the sandwich. The sliced sweet potato offered a little sweetness to counter the savory sandwich. Also, I was craving sweet potatoes instead of broccoli. lol :-)


Overall, the thinly sliced beef was good and not that tough. The slices near the fat end of the roast had some gristle that can be cut out easily.

The bottled au jus didn't really seem to contribute a lot of beefiness, but the mushroom mixture using the roast juices had a nice beefy flavor. Next time, I'll try to find a way to make more jus from the roast. :-)

Hard-Boiled or Hard-Cooked Eggs

Typically, I don't eat boiled eggs, but I've had a craving for an egg salad sandwich. Every once in awhile I'll get a craving for foods that are low on my enjoyment list.

It's like my feelings about Spam (the canned meat). About every two years, I have a craving for Spam. Eventually I'll buy a can and fry it up for breakfast. After which, I've met my sodium and Spam quota for another two years.

Being an engineering geek, I started think about the issue of hard-boiled eggs or hard-cooked eggs.

Background, a little long-winded, while I was in college, the math department shared a building with the Home Economics/Food Science department. I remember leaving calculus and diff e.q. classes smelling the food being cooked. Walking through the building, some classroom labs were set up with 6 or 7 kitchen. It all looked fun.

A classmate mentioned that he had taken the class and it was open to anyone. A few years later, I took the "Introduction to Foods" class. The class was a nice diversion from engineering classes, had a high girl to guy ratio, but more importantly we ate what we cook. :-)

One of the lessons involved egg cookery. The instructor discussed that based upon studies, for tender less rubbery eggs, the eggs should be hard-cooked not hard-boiled.

What's the difference?
Hard cooked: The eggs are brought to a boil, taken off the heat and allowed to sit in the hot water before draining and cooling. A better description can be found at the American Egg Board website: AEB: Hard-cooked eggs

Hard boiled - The eggs are boiled the full cooking time before draining and cooling.

As I mentioned earlier, being an engineering geek, I decided to make a science experiment out of my craving. Hard-boiled vs. Hard-cooked eggs.

The eggs I'm using expire March 17th, in two days.
I used 4 eggs that weighed about 56 grams each.
I pierced the eggs at the air sac, at the fat end of the egg.
Note the pin-prick on the two eggs towards to top-right corner.


The Process:
1. I placed two eggs, one with a pin-prick and one without, into one pot. The other two in another pot.
2. Filled the pots with an ample amount of water - about 1" of water above the eggs.
3. Brought the pots to a boil. I did give the eggs a stir before the water started boiling.
4. For the hard-cooked egg pot, when the water comes to a boil, the pot was taken off the heat, covered and the timer set for 15 minutes.
For the hard-boiled eggs, I let the eggs boil, covered, for 10 minutes.
5. Cooling the eggs. After the allotted time, I dropped the eggs into an ice bath. The eggs with a pin-prick I allowed the eggs to cool completely in the cold water. The other two eggs I just dropped in the ice bath and immediately removed from the water.

What I was trying to show/prove to myself.
1. There is a difference in texture between hard-cooked and hard-boiled.
2. How cooling effects the yolk. The green ring around an egg yolk is due to slow cooling rate.
3. The pin-prick forms a better looking egg.


The Results
Top Left Egg: Hard-Cooked with Pin-Prick, completely cooled
Top Right Egg: Hard-Boiled with Pin-Prick, completely cooled
Bottom Left Egg: Hard-Cooked, No Pin-Prick, dunked and taken out
Bottom Right Egg: Hard-Boiled, No Pin-Prick, dunked and taken out


1. All the egg yolks look great - No green ring.
2. The idea of stirring is to center the egg yolks. This seemed to work for all but one of the eggs. I've also heard that spinning the egg on the counter before placing in the water will center the egg yolk.
3. The pin-prick is supposed to allow air to escape from the air sac so the egg has a nice oval shape. The top two eggs do have a slightly rounder shape than the bottom two.
4. Texture - I tasted each of the four eggs. The egg whites all seemed the same. Although, the hard-cooked eggs were very slightly less rubbery, but I just considered the eggs were all the same since the difference was very subtle.

Lesson learned:
a. Cooking - I don't think there was a big difference between the two methods. Maybe if I was cooking more eggs, but right now I'll consider them the same. I did use older eggs. I wonder if fresher eggs would behave the same.
b. Cooling - There didn't seem to be a big difference with the cooling method. However, I did use the eggs immediately. If I were cooking eggs ahead of time for use later on, I'd still let the eggs cool completely in an ice bath or running water to avoid the green ring around the yolk.
c. Pin-Prick - the pin prick did round the egg a little. If I'm making deviled eggs for a platter, I would still prick the end but use a thicker pin and use eggs that were a little fresher.

Note on egg freshness:
The fresher the egg, the smaller the air sac. This would make for a better presentation for deviled eggs. However, the fresher the eggs the higher the chance the shell will stick to the cooked eggs making peeling very difficult.

Back to why I made boiled eggs - egg salad sandwich.

For the remainder of the eggs, I minced with a fork.
about 2 Tablespoons of Mayonnaise
A little mustard
salt
pepper

Served between soft sandwich bread.

The sandwich hit the spot and I answered some lingering questions I had about egg cookery! :-)

Pork Cutlets

I still had a chunk of uncooked pork loin in the refrigerator leftover from the Chile Verde recipe.

My desire was to make Pork Piccata. Pork piccata, similar to chicken piccata, is floured thinly sliced pork, fried and served in a lemon, butter, caper sauce. However, I didn't have any lemon nor capers. After work, I just wanted to go home and feed the pups so I bypassed the supermarket.

My alternative was Tonkatsu which is fried pork cutlets breaded with panko bread crumbs.
Well, when I looked through my pantry. I didn't have any panko. Where did they go? To the same place where lost socks go? I think I thrashed the panko last month since they were sitting in my pantry for over a year.

Other similar fried cutlet dishes -
Tonkatsu, Japanese
Weiner Schnitzel or Schnitzel, German
Milanesea, Portugal/Latin America

My alternative to my alternative - Simple Fried Pork Cutlets.

The fixins
Pork sliced thinly. Typically pounded to thin out the slice, but I didn't want to put that much effort into the dish.
Flour
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder



Mix the flour, 1/4 teaspoon (each) salt, pepper and garlic powder.
Coat the pork cutlets.


Pan fry in oil. I used an olive oil and butter mixture.
I estimate it was about 2 to 3 minutes each side.

Sauteed Vegetables were served as a side dish.


The final dish
Since the cutlets were thin and from the pork loin, I half expected the cutlets to be dry and stringy. Surprisingly, the cutlets were moist and very tender.

Mustard Cabbage with Braised Pork

A few days before my chili verde craving, I braised pork belly with fermented black beans and tofu.

Today, I was craving vegetables. I think it was my body telling me to eat some leafy greens.

What I did today was boiled some Chinese Mustard Cabbage (Gai Choy) and served it with the leftover braised tofu. The mustard cabbage has a peppery taste to it that's stronger than Boc Choy or Swiss Chard.

Braised Pork over Gai Choy.
(Note: You'll probably notice that there is no pork in the picture. The pork was eaten in previous meals. hehehe.)