Shanghai favorites and home-style cooking

[infernooo]

Hi everyone!

I am looking for recipes that you might consider as "home style" cooking that are common/popular in Shanghai (or around that area). Preferably things you grew up with that may or may not be widely known... I have a friend who was born and raised there and want to surprise them... (so asking them what their favourites or what they grew up eating is a NO-NO - they will see it coming a mile away).

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

[Kent Wang]

Scrambled eggs and tomatoes with sugar. Chop up some tomatoes, stir-fry a bit, add sugar, add eggs and finish. This was the very first dish my mother taught me and all my relatives in Shanghai eat this dish about once a week.

[Ben Hong]

Cook normally, and keep the bag of sugar handy.

[infernooo]

Haha they have a bit of a sweet tooth huh? :-) Thanks for the suggestions guys - keep 'em coming!

[hzrt8w]

Just red braise with dark soy sauce and extra sugar.

[infernooo]

What is the mandarin and cantonese name for red braising?

[XiaoLing]

In Mandarin red braise is 红烧 or in pin yin "Hong Shao."

[alwang]

One thing that I saw consistently on menus when I was in Shanghai that I rarely saw in other parts of China (or in the US) was this great dish that consisted of slices of lotus root where the holes had been stuffed with glutinous rice. It was sticky and sweet, of course. Don't know if this is more restaurant-style than home-style, but it was certainly very tasty. If someone has a recipe, I'd love it...

-al

[jokhm]

yes, that's a hangzhou specialty, and can be quite an excellent one too! Though I've found it often almost sickly-sweet, but here and there you'll catch one that is both sweet and aromatic, and where the lotus root still has a bit of its original texture intact.

[nakedsushi]

Scrambled eggs and tomatoes with sugar. Chop up some tomatoes, stir-fry a bit, add sugar, add eggs and finish. This was the very first dish my mother taught me and all my relatives in Shanghai eat this dish about once a week.

←

I've loved this dish since the first time I remember my parents making it. I think you got the order of making it mixed up though, or maybe it was unclear. I usually cook th scrambled eggs slightly under-done first, set it aside, cook the tomatoes, and when the tomatoes are done, throw in the scrambled eggs for a quick mix.

Doing the tomatoes first and then throwing raw eggs in afterward always led to "hey, what happened to my eggs" disaster for me.

[Kent Wang]

Nope, we did it the opposite way then. No need for setting aside the eggs this way.

[XiaoLing]

I cook my tomato and eggs the same way nakedsushi does it too.

I always cook the eggs first and then the tomatoes. I never add sugar either.

Here's what mine looks like:

I like mine with extra sauce so that I can mix it with rice. YUM!

[jokhm]

I've had this cooked by some northern fujian people and they always added a touch of wine, and lots of garlic and green onions. I have to see how exactly they prepared it though, but it was the best variation of such a common dish that I've ever had. Delicious

[misstenacity]

This is that lotus root dish of which you speak so highly:

I LOVED it when I had it at a restaurant called something like "Old Shanghai" or "Old Shanghai Bar & Grill"... I remember it was on a ground/sub-ground floor, but wish I had taken photos of all of the restaurant exteriors I visited in China - it would make recall so much easier!

Anyway, it was one of my most favorite dishes of the whole trip. That and the eel.

Andrea

in Albuquerque

...here's my slideshow (with kind of little pictures), if you haven't seen it yet:

http://tenacity.net/photographs/china/china-ss.htm