*Updated* Stew minced pork and egg

Six months ago, my brother can't even fry a decent sunny-side-up egg. Recently, he made this minced pork and egg over rice (using my recipe :D) and sent me this picture. I hope our mom will be proud when she read this. After all, her youngest child is finally grown up (from cooking for himself.. hahaha). I'm also gonna quote my sister who said that this was proof that Gusteau (From Ratatouille) is right... "Everyone Can Cook!"




Here's a recipe for my bro who recently bought cheap minced meat and asked me for the simplest recipe possible. So as per request, here's an even more simplified recipe (I omitted some ingredients that I know he doesn't have in his dorm) I gave him.

Simple minced pork and egg stew

1 bulb onion, peel and cut into tiny pieces
200 gr minced pork
2 eggs, boiled and peel
5 - 8 Tbs light soy sauce (it depends on the brand of your soy sauce, korean soy sauce is not so salty, chinese brand is saltier but indonesian soy sauce is the saltiest)
2 Tbs dark mushroom soy sauce
10 Tbs indonesian sweet soy sauce (kecap manis)
oil to pan fry
white pepper to taste

• heat vegetable oil on pan and sautee onion. Once they turn brown, add the minced meat and stir fry
  
• season with soy sauce (for taste), dark mushroom soy sauce (for colour), sweet soy sauce (for the sweetness).
• add the eggs into the meat and pour in 2 cups of water into the mixture.
  
• stew for 30 minutes so that the eggs can absorbs the sauce. Don't forget to flip the eggs to get a complete brown surface.
  
• Add water if needed (i.e. if all of the water evaporated).
  
• put pepper to taste and It's not necessary to salt this dish. The saltiness comes from the soy sauce. Add in some sugar, if it's not sweet enough for your taste.
  

This dish is a bit on the sweet side since that's how our mom used to make it. So following the tradition, here is a sweet minced pork and egg stew. By the way feel free to add in button mushroom or shitake mushroom. This dish is so versatile, you can have it with both rice or noodle. Pour the meat with the sauce onto some rice and you got lu rou fan (stewed meat over rice), pour the sauce onto noodle and garnish with boiled bok choy and you got noodle with pork sauce

Pork Shrimp Chives Dumpling

Chinese new year or Chun Jie (lit. Spring Festival) marks the beginning of spring. At this time of the year most Chinese family cooks special meals that use expensive ingredients such as shark fins, sea cucumbers and abalones. Furthermore, there are a number of fruits that are served especially for Chinese New Year. These fruits usually have hidden meanings within their names. For example tangerines symbolize happiness and good deeds, pineapple imply prosperous year ahead, apples means peacefulness and many many more.

The root of my family is from Fujian province in southern china, so the cuisine for Chinese new year are also heavily influenced by the province delicatessen. Dishes such as fish maw soup, Luo Han Zai (Buddha's delight), pork with bamboos and shark fin soup are only some which comes to my mind now. However as this year I'm stuck here in Berlin, I need to say good bye to all those intricate dishes.

Luckily a good friend of mine, ZL, who come from Northern China (Dong Bei), which are famous for their dough dishes, invites me to the "reunion dinner". We decide to cook a typical northern specialty, dumplings (Jiao Zi). These Dumplings which resemble old Chinese money called sycee symbolize again prosperity. There's even a custom to hide one piece of coin inside of the dumpling and the person who pick out the one, will be lucky for the rest of the year. The fillings for the tiny pocket is a mixture of ground pork, shrimp, scrambled egg and chive. These little pieces of heaven are so good, that I gobble down more that I can count. Unfortunately, I do not pick out the lucky dumpling as ZL refuses to put coin into it. She says, it's unhygienic!

army of dumpling queuing to be boiled

here are the cooked jiao zi, waiting to be dunk into black vinegar and chili oil

Recipe for the filling:
500 gr ground pork
1 stalk Chinese chives, minced
3 eggs, scrambled without salt
300 gr shrimp, minced finely
3 Tbs sesame oil
a pinch of MSG
salt and pepper to taste

mixed all ingredients in a deep bowl and scoop the meat filling with a tablespoon into the dumpling skin. Fold them tightly to prevent leakage while boiling.

And yes we cheated. We bought the dumpling skins from an asian store in Kantstraße 101 called Oriental. One package costs around 2 euro and those paper thin wrapper are enough to wrap all these meat fillings. Btw, if there's some meat fillings leftovers, just mixed in some starch and make meat balls out of them.