Good morning all!

Welcome back to Sunday Gravy for yet another trip in the way-back machine.

I’ve been cleaning out my “retro meals” recipe cabinet and am filling in the blanks on those that I may have inadvertently missed until now. I’m of the opinion that if you have a hand written recipe card that was passed down to you from an older relative at some point in your life, well then THAT can officially pass as a retro recipe. I guess I could accept a recipe that was printed on paper from a desktop computer in the early internet days but current online “view only” recipes shouldn’t apply.

Besides, have you actually viewed some of these food nerd food blogs – well apart from this dazzling version right here? Jesus fucking GOD some of these sites are fucking horrible. They can take forever to get to the actual recipes because you are going to be fucking ASSAULTED by advertising.

Easily one of the most enduring traits of the entire [DFO] experience is that we are 100 percent ad free.

Because we fucking rule.

Once you get past the fact that you have been force fed enough advertising to destroy the remaining brain cells that you haven’t already killed with drugs or alcohol, you then have to read paragraph after paragraph of the author just droning on and fucking on about some fucking shit that isn’t even fucking related to the recipe you wanted to…

Oh fuck.

Sorry.

So egg foo young!

According to the “wikis”

“Egg foo young (Chinese: 芙蓉蛋; pinyin: fúróngdàn; also spelled egg fooyung, egg foo yong, egg foo yung, or egg fu yung) is an omelette dish found in Chinese Indonesian, British, and Chinese American cuisine. The name comes from the Cantonese language. Egg foo young is derived from fu yung egg slices, a mainland Chinese recipe from Guangdong.

And get this shit.

“Chinese restaurants in St. Louis, Missouri, serve what is called a St. Paul sandwich, which is an egg foo young patty served with mayonnaise, dill pickle, and sometimes lettuce and tomato between two slices of white bread.”

Of course it’s St. Louis who has this abortion. Serve it with your provel cheese and your fried raviolis while your at it.

No offense Internet Dad but that shit’s abhorrent.

/shivers

According to most legends the Americanized version has been around since the 1800’s. As a way to attract American eaters with a tame palate to what was then a fairly exotic cuisine, the restaurants created something that was a little more approachable for the food-timid people of the times. They made an omelette with some veggies in it.

Then they poured gravy over it.

Because of course they did.

Who the fuck am I to cajole the portly citizens of the time. Shit man this feature is CALLED Sunday Gravy after all.

It’s just…

Nevermind.

The basic fact is, this fucker is goddamn delicious and pretty fucking easy to make. And it fits our current “retro” theme!

You long time readers know that we’ve ventured into the Americanized version of Chinese food before. A few times in fact.

Remember this beauty?

The Chinese two-item combo with Mongolian beef and broccoli and kung Pao Chicken!

We also ventured into the current king of Chinese take-out Orange Chicken and fried rice!

Then yet another time we got all crazy and shit and made our very own homemade egg rolls.

You’re gonna want a food processor for that one. Trust me. Granted I served the egg rolls with Korean barbecue but it’s an Americanized Chinese egg roll regardless.

You could serve a goddamn feast making all of those recipes.

Today we’re going to add another item to the take-out menu.

Let’s make some motherfucking egg foo young!

Egg Foo Young – Two Ways!

There are two components to egg foo young, the omelette and the gravy. Just keeping this to terms we can relate to. The gravy is a key component to this dish so let’s start it first to ensure we have the proper thickness or viscosity of the gravy.

It’s a simple gravy.

(3) cups of chicken stock – yes store bought is fine

(2) tablespoons of corn starch – of course

(2) tablespoons of sugar

(2) tablespoons of rice wine vinegar – you can use plain white distilled vinegar here too

(2) tablespoons of soy sauce

A grind or two of Szechuan pepper if you have some, black pepper otherwise

As mentioned this is a simple gravy to start but the consistency is key.

Get out a medium sized bowl and dump all the gravy makings in. Whisk for about 30-45 seconds until the sauce is really frothy.

Pour the whisked sauce into a medium sized sauce pan and place over medium heat. This will cook for about 20-25 minutes, maybe more. The beauty of this gravy is you can reduce the heat to low when it hits it’s desired consistency while you finish the rest of the meal. A few more minutes of low heat will only get the gravy a little more thickness and there’s nothing wrong with some thickness.

When the sauce first gets simmering go ahead and make some rice. Just plain white jasmine rice today. Cook according to the package instructions.

Let’s make the egg patties next.

1/2 cup of minced onion

1 cup of mushrooms – your choice of variety

2 cloves of garlic – minced

3 scallions – green onions – chopped and some more for a garnish

7 eggs

(1) small package of frozen, very small or “salad” shrimp. I used pre-cooked like this.

Some grinds of Szechuan or black pepper

1 teaspoon of salt

Peanut oil for cooking – about 2 tablespoons. You can use canola or vegetable oil if you like.

Let’s get started by mincing up the onion and garlic and giving a rough chop to the mushrooms.

Onion and mushrooms go in 1 tablespoon of oil on the stove top over medium heat. Cook for about 7 minutes until most of the water cooks out of the mushrooms. This is key for the finished product.

Remember we’re doing all of this while the gravy is simmering.

Well shit, since we’re dicing things let’s cut up the green onion.

Let’s take a second and look back at the frozen shrimp picture.

Take notice that if these are frozen they will need to defrost. I defrosted in cold water and since the shrimp are small – really goddamn small – it takes about 30 minutes. Factor that in here somewhere during the preparation.

Crack them eggs!

Try to avoid channeling your very own inner “Rocky Training Montage” here and not drink the 7 raw eggs.

Didn’t take that much effort to avoid did it?

Get yourself a bigger bowl out.

Whisk the eggs together with the onion, garlic, mushroom and green onions salt and pepper.

A quick note here: most of the versions of egg foo young I’ve had in the past had some beansprouts scrambled in. I looked for them. Really. My grocery store told me they haven’t carried bean sprouts in over 5 years due to a past E-Coli related lawsuit and said most of the other grocery store chains have followed suit. They mentioned trying a farmer’s market. I guess what I’m saying here is if you can find beansprouts use some beansprouts. They would be scrambled in right here along with the other veggies.

I guess not having their customers shit themselves into the hospital was more important to the grocery store chains than carrying beansprouts.

Fuckers.

Anyway.

Using a clean paper towel wipe out that skillet that we used to saute the onion and mushrooms. Add some peanut oil and get to heating over a medium heat.

I mentioned that we are doing two versions of this dish. The first version is a standard egg foo young. The second version will be the same but we will be adding the defrosted shrimp to it.

Ladle some of the egg mixture into the preheated pan. I guess that’s about half a cup? Maybe two thirds of a cup? It was a ladle full OK?

If you’ve made an omelette before then you’ve got this fucker.

This cooked for about 8 minutes a side. Tilt the pan, swirl the eggs, life up the edge to allow the uncooked egg to slide underneath. You know? Do omelette shit with it.

Let it tighten up.

When the 8 minutes or so have elapsed flip this bastard. Use your best one hand flip if you’ve got one.

Or just use a spatula if preferred. Give this another 7-8 minutes and this one is done.

If you’re doing this version as is, you would top with the gravy and serve over rice but we’ve got another version to make. With shrimp.

Same process as before but just as the eggs begin to tighten before the first flip add in the desired amount of shrimp.

After 8 minutes give this a flip and finish cooking the second side.

You regular procurers of Chinese take-out know that egg foo young can be strictly vegetarian, made with mushrooms, pork, chicken, barbecue pork or chicken or beef. Customize it!

Today I had some plain white jasmine rice, put the two “Youngs” over the rice and then spoon on some of the gravy.

Yes, those are store bought egg rolls. Shit, if you’re inspired I already gave you the egg role recipe right up there. Knock yourselves out!

The finished dish has a level of, dare I say, elegance from the fluffy omelette preparation. That gravy is a delight and could be added over fucking roadkill and it would work. It’s got the salt from the soy and if you get the consistency right it’s got an almost creamy texture to it. The next day I took the leftover rice and just poured some of the leftover heated gravy over it and it fucking ruled. Depending on what you add to the egg foo young you can control the savory element yourself. I liked the small briny snap from the salad shrimp and the earthy garlicky notes from the mushrooms and garlic.

Here’s the close-up.

You can make as many variations with this as you can with an actual omelette.

Just get the gravy right and you can build in a shitload of forgiveness.

Thanks for stopping by as we continue to build upon our Chinese take-out menu.

Your being there is always appreciated.

Cook things!

PEACE!