Sequestration Meal #181

 

I had some JUST Egg left and in a phone conversation I was having with a friend she said she'd made egg foo young for dinner, and suddenly I had to have some. I don't think I've had any in 20 years, but I remembered how I used to love it, the strange American-Chinese fusion that begat omelets over rice covered in gravy. In these times, getting excited about anything is tough, so when the moment comes, I capture it.

It was imperfect; I think I should have made a richer gravy with a good, brown roux rather than a cornstarch-thickened sauce as the various online recipes suggested. And JUST Egg was very tricky to work with. In the end, though, none of that mattered, because it was vegan egg foo young and I felt I'd performed some sort of wizardry.

Mostly I winged this since I didn't have the ingredients called for in a lot of the recipes. So this was JUST Egg with some soy sauce mixed with stir-fried veggies: thin strips of julienned carrots, chopped broccoli, and sliced mushrooms. The gravy was a mixture of broth made from Better than Bouillon No Chicken paste, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and corn starch. It had that distinctive "oriental" flavor of the "Chinese" food of my childhood.

I know a lot of people these days disdain these bland foods that are largely unrecognizable to the cultures that inspired them, but I see them as their own thing. Is this Chinese food? No, but I like it, and I do like actual Chinese food sometimes, too. This is not an either/or proposition!

While I looked for recipes, I found some others using things like chickpea flour, and now I can't wait to try them! It's delightful to have new things to look forward to.