Despite A Total Lack of Demand - More Recipes!

Today we had Chinese Lunch Table, i.e., free lunch at a restaurant with our teachers. We went to Piaoliang Beizi ("Pretty Cup": not its real name) and when the teachers asked us what we wanted, I suggested a mushroom dish that's very good there. Only instead of "mushroom" (mo GU), I said "magic" (mo SHU). Everyone was very confused.

So here are three recipes from today's cooking class. None of them are magic, but they are pretty good anyway.

Baby Tofu and Eggs

Take some eggs and a bit of salt and beat them very well in one direction. Heat up about three tablespoons of oil (all measurements are completely made up - try it and let me know, eh?) in your wok that I told you last time you need to have. Get it nice and hot. Toss in your eggs and swirl them around in the wok for about a minute, until they are clearly not raw: not translucent, but still in more or less one piece and fairly moist and quite soft. Remove from wok and put on a plate. Add a bit more oil to the wok and once it's quite hot toss in some finely chopped ginger, followed in short order by a package of very soft tofu. Mix it around until it's like scrambled eggs and add some di san xian (ask me nice and I'll mail you some) and some diced scallions.
It might interest you to know that I just totally forgot the English for "scallion" and had to look it up in my Chinese/English dictionary. This concerns me. Anyway, once you've scrambled well your tofu (oh god it's happening to my grammar, too), toss those eggs back in and add a bit of hot sauce - not Tabasco, though - but I can't think of any other kind of hot sauce you have in America. Do other families besides mine use another kind of hot sauce? I guess you can make do with Tabasco for the time being but if you can find something a bit less smoky tasting that would be best. Mix it all up until it looks quite unappetizing and put it on a plate to serve. Garnish with some more chopped up "scallions" and perhaps some chopped hot red peppers if you've any that aren't too dusty. It's better than it looks.

Da Cong Bing (Scallion Cake)

Okay. So of course our cooking instructions are given in Chinese, so I am not too sure about the repeatability of this one, because when I asked whether the yellow flour was corn, our teacher said no, it was "corn" (in English), which is different from corn because it's smaller, but it's not small corn. However, I can't think of any other sort of flour that's yellow, so we're going with corn. Also, I'm assuming you don't have any special greyish flour from Tibet, and I think semolina's too heavy, so let's try a mix of whole wheat and white flour. Still with me? Good.

In a smallish bowl, combine two parts white/wheat flour and one part "corn" flour (like you'd use for cornbread), two eggs, and a bit of water. Stir in one direction, adding flour or water as necessary, until there are no lumps and it's about the consistancy of pancake batter. Add some chopped scallions and mix well. Heat up about three tablespoons of oil in your wok and swirl it around until all surfaces of the wok are covered. Pour some batter into the wok (maybe a quarter of a cup - it's hard to work with when there's too much) and swirl it around until it's like a thick crepe. You can use your spoon to spread it if you need to. After a bit, flip it over - both sides should be lightly browned. Serve hot.

Fried Cabbage

Wash some white cabbage and chop it into bite-size chunks. Heat up some oil in your wok (a bit more this time) and get it plenty hot. Toss in your cabbage, add a bit of di san xian and some hot sauce (see above) and cook until cooked, yet still crisp. I will ordinarily not eat cabbage but this is actually pretty good.