Sunday, April 19, 2009

Request Line - SK

This post is dedicated to a friend currently on exchange in the U.S.


I can't remember the first time we talked about the tomatoegg dish anymore. My assumption is that the conversation came up some time during work, and caught between professing our love of tofu and the dinner date at Temasek which never happened in time before her departure.


It's not like we haven't kept in contact while she's been over there. In fact we've been keeping each other updated with EPIC emails (the length and detail of which puts War & Peace to shame), but somehow, somewhere in the epic emails, the recipe for this dish got lost, and the dish never eventuated on the other end.

Luckily for her, she has a foodie friend. A foodie friend would never let a friend starve, even if they were 9000kms away.

So here's the recipe, again. With love.


I made this last night. For those who have been following the posts, you would be aware of the sad state of my fridge.

Well, at the time of making this, the problem had not yet been resolved, so the eggs pictured above were the very last normal chicken eggs in our house. (I still had mini chicken eggs from my own chickens, but they don't work so well for this dish).

Oh and they were the last two tomatoes as well. The one in the middle of the picture was bruised. But you don't know that.

Good news is, the randomly missing member of my family is back today. She never lets the fridge run empty. In fact, I think it goes the other direction...which gets annoying at times as she takes up all your jelly-making space in the fridge. And then you can't make jelly. And that's just mean.

Either way, this has always been one of my ABSOLUTE favourite dishes. I've told my parents many-a-times that I'd rather have a plate of tomatoegg to go with my rice than abalone or lobster. I'm a weird child like that.


TomatoEgg
Preparation time: <2mins
Cooking time: roughly 10mins

Buy:
2 medium sized tomatoes, roughly chopped
3 eggs, beaten
1 tsp chicken powder (or MSG)
1 1/2 tblsp fish sauce (feel free to use cooking salt, I think you'll need about a teaspoon or two?)
1 1/2 tsp sugar
Oil for cooking

Cook:
1.) In a frying pan, heat oil for frying.
2.) Fry the eggs in the pan until just cooked. Do not scramble and break it up into little pieces just yet. Remove and set aside.
3.) Add oil to a wok and heat.
4.) Add tomatoes to wok and let it sizzle. Turn on high heat and toss it around a few times.
5.) Quickly add chicken powder and fish sauce. This will help collapse the tomatoes and extract liquid from them to make the sauce. Turn down heat and let it simmer for 3 minutes.
6.) Add sugar. This will help thicken the sauce. Simmer for another minute.
7.) Turn the heat up and add cooked egg. Break it up into smaller pieces while coating it with the sauce. Cook quickly and turn off heat as soon as egg is coated and broken up.
8.) Plate it up.

Nom it while it's hot.

5 comments:

  1. I LOVE YOU!!! You're the awesomest person =) Shall cook it before I get home and keep photographic evidence.

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  2. lol! my version of this is where the tomato is more pureed and the skins have come off AND i add some extra tomato sauce to taste. but yes, an awesome dish! :) guess who! lol

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  3. Ok I totally just mistook you for Xia.

    Um. Andy? Is that you?

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  4. indeed. i don't believe xia speaks like that. haha. how's life?

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  5. Hahaha my grandmother made a very similar Italian dish actually.

    What she used to do was make a basic tomato sauce (sugo) and then she would scramble an egg through it, using the hot tomato sauce to cook the egg. It was so so good served with toast and liberal amounts of salt and pepper.

    ReplyDelete