SOUR DISHES THAT TASTE OH SO SWEET

Dishes of the sweet and sour flavor are popular in the summer season, and children especially love them. Across China, various ingredients and condiments are combined in different ratios to create the most suitable balance of sweet and sour, with sugar, honey, vinegar and vegetables providing the two flavors.

This week, we’ve rounded up some iconic sweet and sour dishes in China that can cheer up the appetite in the hot weather.

Tomato and egg stir-fry

When young Chinese people start learning home-style cooking from their parents, tomato and egg stir-fry is one of the first recipes to be taught.

The simple sweet and sour dish is easy to make with readily accessible ingredients — eggs and tomatoes. This dish is also a match made in heaven with rice — nothing can beat the experience of pouring a spoonful of the vibrant sauce on a bed of hot and fluffy steamed rice.

There are two steps. First, scramble an egg and set aside for later use. Then add oil and chunks of ripe tomato, letting the tomato cook on a medium to low heat for a few minutes so the juice comes out. This is a crucial step because adding water too early will dilute the sauce. A little bit of water can be added later.

When the tomatoes are nice and soft in a thick sauce, add the scrambled egg and season with salt and sugar, turn up the heat to reduce the sauce. With a sprinkle of fresh scallions, the dish is ready.

The tomato and egg stir-fry can also be a topping for noodle dishes with or without soup. In some places, the noodles are boiled directly in a tomato and egg soup for intense flavors.

Tomato and egg stir-fry is also a dish that often becomes the center of controversy, due to the differences in recipes as well as its iconic status in Chinese culinary culture.

There has long been a debate about whether tomato and egg stir-fry needs sugar in the seasoning. For a lot of people, especially those who grew up in northern China, adding sugar to savory dishes seems a bizarre thing to do.

In this dish, a small teaspoon of sugar doesn’t necessarily make the taste sweeter, but works as an agent to bring out the flavors from the tomatoes even more.

There’s also an argument over adding water or not to this dish. Some people believe water makes the sauce less flavorful, while others argue that extra water not only produces more sauce in the dish that can be mixed with the staple, but also prevents burning the pan.

Because tomato and egg stir-fry is such a fundamental dish in Chinese cuisine and so representative of Chinese cooking, it’s often featured in TV series, films and advertisements as a centerpiece on the dining table.

In 2017, China Merchants Bank ran an advertisement featuring a Chinese student who was supposed to make a dish for a potluck party eight days after he arrived in the US. His friends are bringing dishes from their cuisine and he chose tomato and egg stir-fry as a signature Chinese dish, which is also very easy to make.

The student sent messages to his parents on WeChat asking for help. It seems a natural thing to do, but remember there’s a nearly 12-hour time difference between China and US, and him calling his parents at noon is actually midnight in China.

First, his parents gave him vocal instructions, but he failed badly. Then his mother got up from bed in the middle of the night and recorded a video of her making the dish. He eventually succeeded.

But the advertisement was widely criticized because, firstly, it’s such a simple recipe that a college student should be able to find it online and follow it easily, and secondly, it was brutal to wake up his parents for something so trival.