What is your comfort food? Some might say Mac 'n Cheese, cookies and milk, grilled cheese, ...Well, for my girlfriends and I it's Chinese-style sausages (lap cheong), salted duck eggs served with steamed rice. All right, so it's not that healthy and you shouldn't eat it on a regular basis. There's a lot of sodium, saturated fat and preservatives. You wouldn't want to have this meal before you go for a medical checkup. My girlfriends have been asking me to make it for the last little while and, of course, I happily obliged. This is a classic, simple meal that many Chinese have had growing up. And it is so easy. And did I mention quick? It takes only 30 minutes to cook, but for the most part you can walk away and do something else.
So here's how I did it:
1. Rinse the rice and put it in the rice cooker (a must-have in any Chinese household) and add the appropriate amount of water.
2. Rinse sausages and add to the rice.
3. Clean and rinse the salted duck eggs. The eggs are covered in black soil. I'm not sure about the purpose of this soil. I think that it is to protect the eggs in transport? Or is it a salty soil that preserves the egg? Anyways, once the soil has been scraped away, rinse the eggs clean and place them on a small plate which is then placed on top of the rice and sausages. Set the rice cooker (I set it to the Quick setting, about 20 minutes).
Now I would've stopped there and called it a meal, but to round out this dish I wanted some vegetables. As the main part of our meal was cooking, I put a pot filled halfway with water on the stove. As I waited for it to boil, I sliced up some ginger and half of a head of lettuce. I added it to the boiling water and cooked it until wilted. I also wanted to add one of my all-time favorite comfort food to this meal - a fried egg, but not just any fried egg. Eggs fried into a coin-purse style. Why do I call it that? Well, actually, my mom uses this term. The egg is kind of shaped like a coin purse. I love it. When you break it over steaming rice, you see the runny yolk seep into the crevices between the grains of steamed rice. It's almost like a sauce for the rice, especially if you add a dollop of Oyster-flavoured sauce to it. Out came the frying pan. Once the pan was hot, I sprayed it with oil with my oil sprayer pump. I cracked 3 eggs into the pan, away from each other. After the bottom side turned opaque, I folded one side of egg over to meet the other side of the egg, almost like closing a book, or in this case, closing your coin purse, and waited for it to set. When the bottom of the eggs are done to your likeness, flip them over carefully so that you don't break the yolk. Once nicely browned, you're done.
So here's how I did it:
1. Rinse the rice and put it in the rice cooker (a must-have in any Chinese household) and add the appropriate amount of water.
2. Rinse sausages and add to the rice.
3. Clean and rinse the salted duck eggs. The eggs are covered in black soil. I'm not sure about the purpose of this soil. I think that it is to protect the eggs in transport? Or is it a salty soil that preserves the egg? Anyways, once the soil has been scraped away, rinse the eggs clean and place them on a small plate which is then placed on top of the rice and sausages. Set the rice cooker (I set it to the Quick setting, about 20 minutes).
Now I would've stopped there and called it a meal, but to round out this dish I wanted some vegetables. As the main part of our meal was cooking, I put a pot filled halfway with water on the stove. As I waited for it to boil, I sliced up some ginger and half of a head of lettuce. I added it to the boiling water and cooked it until wilted. I also wanted to add one of my all-time favorite comfort food to this meal - a fried egg, but not just any fried egg. Eggs fried into a coin-purse style. Why do I call it that? Well, actually, my mom uses this term. The egg is kind of shaped like a coin purse. I love it. When you break it over steaming rice, you see the runny yolk seep into the crevices between the grains of steamed rice. It's almost like a sauce for the rice, especially if you add a dollop of Oyster-flavoured sauce to it. Out came the frying pan. Once the pan was hot, I sprayed it with oil with my oil sprayer pump. I cracked 3 eggs into the pan, away from each other. After the bottom side turned opaque, I folded one side of egg over to meet the other side of the egg, almost like closing a book, or in this case, closing your coin purse, and waited for it to set. When the bottom of the eggs are done to your likeness, flip them over carefully so that you don't break the yolk. Once nicely browned, you're done.
Just in time. The rice cooker gives 3 beeps to let me know that it's done. I opened the lid and the steam fills the air. Once it dissipated, we saw our delectable treasures within:
I wanted to show the girls my newest toy, an egg shaper. I quickly peeled a piping hot duck egg and put it the mold and ran it under cold water for a minute. The egg was a little small for the mold so it didn't turn out perfectly but my friends still oohed and ahhed.
Chinese-style comfort food doesn't get better than this:
2 comments:
Mmmm...I love this stuff,too!
Me too!!
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