[Sca-cooks] Maybe OOP - Chinese Brown Sauce

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

On Mon, 21 Mar 2005, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:

> Also sprach SEBD at aol.com:
>> In a message dated 3/21/05 7:40:34 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, 
>> adamantius.magister at verizon.net writes:
>> 
>> The only one  I absolutely can't figure out is the mysterious brown
>> goo some restaurants  and take-out places put on egg foo young (we just
>> drizzle oyster sauce or dark  soy out of the bottle at home; it's much 
>> better).
>> ___________
>> 
>> Good thinking! Unfortunately, I learned to make it in my giddy youth.
>> 
>> The impenetrable brown goo atop retro-style egg fu young is made  thusly:
>> 
>> 1 cup Chinese chicken broth
>> 1 T regular soy sauce
>> 1 T oyster sauce
>> 1 T cornstarch in four t water
>> 
>> Boil the broth, stir in the seasonings, thicken with the cornstarch and 
>> water.
>> 
>> Drop this glop liberally onto the fried egg/veggie/meat or fish  pancake, 
>> let
>> the whole mess congeal slightly, and serve.
>
> Funny... when you order scrambled eggs with shrimp or pork on rice in one of 
> the Cantonese greasy chopsticks in New York's Chinatown, it either comes 
> drizzled with oyster sauce (the actual sauce, not a "gravy" made from it) or 
> dark soy sauce (sometimes the flavorful dark soy previously used to cook 
> things like soy sauce chicken). If the latter, it is drizzled around the 
> edges of the eggs in the wok, forming a slightly liquid glaze.
>
> What you're describing is a pretty typical stir-frying sauce at our house, 
> although it seems like an awful lot of cornstarch (we do maybe 2 tsp for a 
> pint, and my wife complains about letting the Lo Fan --essentially, 
> Americans-- in her kitchen).
>
> The other sauce I described, the one that has that distinctively caramelized 
> taste of dark roux, is something different. It's not even as dark as the 
> other sauces we talked about; it may actually be based on dark roux, but I 
> haven't encountered anyone who could verify or debunk that.
>
> Adamantius

When we were growing up, my father would occasionally make his recipe for 
egg fu yung, which involved bead molasses. I think the jar may actually 
still be in the cabinet. The gravy, IIRC, was very dark and slightly 
sweet. I've never had anything like it anywhere, but I also tend to avoid 
the really cheap places.

I don't know where Dad got his recipe--I know he was in Hong Kong at least 
once while he was in the Navy, but no idea if he picked it up there or 
not. IIRC his recipe also involved bean sprouts, and that's all I 
remember.

Margaret FitzWilliam