Chinese egg drop soup recipe

How to Prepare / Make / Cook - ?Chinese egg drop soup recipe

Americans refer to wheat as the staff of life, but to Asians, the staff of life is rice. For the Chinese, there is nothing more comforting than the warm fragrance of rice cooking. It is as compelling as the aroma of fresh bread baking in the oven. The rice bowl is ubiquitous. Even in the wheat-growing North, rice is eaten at just about every meal, including breakfast. When Chinese greet each other they often say, “Have you eaten rice yet?” instead of “Hello”.

My mother cooked long-grain rice for the dinner table and general eating but preferred short-grain rice to make congee, a thin rice gruel served at breakfast, for a late night snack, and to the elderly. At every lunar New Year, my mother made nien gao, a sticky cake made from glutinous rice, sweetened with sugar, and flavored with candied sweet olive blossoms from the Osman thus fragrans tree. Following the Shanghai tradition, she often tinted the cake light green or pink. This special desert symbolized the sticking together of the family and good luck for the new year in general.

In northern China, noodles, leavened and unleavened breads, and dumplings made predominately from wheat flour are the staple starch at meals. There are many varieties and types of noodles from thin, wispy noodles called dragon’s beard to thick wide ribbons. Instead of birthday cakes we serve long noodles to symbolize long life.

My mother used to make birthday noodles by hand for each of us on our Chinese birthdays, which was based on the lunar calendar (our Western birthday was based on the Gregorian calendar). As a child I would brag to my amazed friends that I had two birthdays! We always had cake on our Western birthdays, but long-life noodles were traditional on our Chinese birthdays. The birthday person did not have to help, but everyone else was involved. Mother used to joke that she would make our birthday noodles so long that we would have to eat them from a ladder!

When I was growing up, Chinese noodles were available only at noodle shops in Chinatown. Fresh Chinese noodles are delicious, but noodle dishes can also be made successfully with packaged dried spaghetti or vermicelli. We often made noodle dishes with packaged spaghetti, and I still do. Noodles are served as a snack, lunch, or as a one-dish meal.

Other wheat dishes especially popular in the North are man tou (steamed bread) and bing (flatbread), such as scallion cakes (page 303) and Mandarin Pancakes. Man tou, the most common family-style steamed bread, is traditionally eaten with dishes cooked with a savory gravy. Various filled steamed breads are served mainly by street vendors or restaurants and not usually made at home.