There are many good foods in China, such as Chinese noodles, dumplings, Mapo tofu and hotpot. But, my favourite Chinese dish is stir fried tomato and eggs. Tomato egg for short.

You might not know about it, since you can hardly find it in Japanese Chinese restaurants, but tomato egg is a very common home cooking dish in China. You just stir fry tomatoes and eggs in a pan. It’s simple.

Backpackers travelling to China for the first time are usually thrilled to eat tomato egg. It’s delicious and a little sweet. It matches the tastes of the Japanese. The idea of stir fried tomatoes was also very interesting. Since I was born, I had always thought that tomatoes were eaten raw. I had never considered cooking them.

I love tomatoes. When I see tomatoes, I get an irresistible urge to eat them with honey. My younger brother also finds tomatoes irresistible. One day, my mother laughed as I was eating them with my brother.

“Don’t you think it’s baby food?”

“Why would it be?”

My younger brother asked.

I ate silently. The dining table wasn’t a place of harmony with my younger brother. It was a battlefield for food. If you talk, your food would be taken. There was no time to talk. Whenever I sat at the table with my brother, I always saw him as a monster or evil creature trying to destroy mankind. Even after growing up, that habit didn’t go away.

“When you were a baby, I would coat tomatoes with honey. Both of you loved it.”

My mother seemed to be happy.

I see, I understood why I liked to eat tomatoes. For both me and my brother, honeyed tomatoes were the first foods we ever tasted. Because of that, whenever I saw tomatoes, I wanted to eat them with honey. The ingrained memories of a baby were frightening. They were firmly engraved into my body.

After returning to Japan from a long trip, I immediately tried making stir fried tomatoes and eggs in my parent’s kitchen. But it wasn’t delicious at all. The result was something completely different from what I had tasted in China. I tried making it several times, but it didn’t work. I had thought the seasonings might have been different, but I didn’t know what to use.

It was a waste to throw it away, so I ate an unsavoury tomato egg. However, after eating such a bad tomato and egg, I started to miss the authentic tomato egg.

One day, an idea came to my mind.

That’s right. There’s a Chinatown right?

In Chinatown, there should be restaurants that serve almost authentic tomato egg.

On my next day off, I took the JR Kobe line to the Momotachi Chinatown.

There was a Chinese restaurant at the back of a shopping street with a display window lined with Chinese herbs and steamed buns in bamboo steaming baskets. I looked in with excitement.

I found it!

There was a model of a dish of tomato egg made from wax. I could finally eat tomato egg.

However, when I looked at the price, I couldn’t help but shrink back. It cost 700 yen. It might be a normal price in Japan, but in a rural Chinese town, I could order it for about 60 yen per plate. My head understood the reason for the difference in price, but my body didn’t. When I considered paying more than 10 times the price for it, I began to think deeply. I thought about it for so long that I lost my appetite. In the end, it would be better to eat the cheap and delicious authentic tomato egg in a rural country town.

I didn’t know.

I left Chinatown with indecisive feelings.

After that, I went to China and ate tomato egg to my heart’s content. Not just stir fried tomato and egg, I also found tomato and egg soup was also quite good.

One day, as I was studying abroad, the old auntie teacher of language classes invited foreign students to her home to try her homemade cooking. She was the teacher in charge of “Basic Chinese”.

Only teachers who were good at teaching would teach beginner classes. The old auntie was good at teaching. It was a hard job because she had to explain things in Chinese to students who couldn’t speak Chinese at all. Most of the time, we couldn’t answer, so she had to be patient. The old auntie was also in charge of the writing assignments of the senior class. It took up a lot of time because she had to read the compositions written by foreigners and then mark them. As a very experienced teacher, she was always in charge of the difficult classes.

The old auntie was a dignified teacher. I looked forward to going abroad every year, so I tried very hard to study English for that reason.

“Everyday study, everyday forget.”

She said that and laughed.

“I’m too old to memorise things. Our generation was educated in socialism and Russian was my first foreign language, so I basically don’t have any basic English skills. But, it’s fun if I can speak just a bit of it.”

On the table, I was able to find my favourite tomato egg among other dishes such as fried carp, sliced roasted duck and winter melon soup.

Bright red tomatoes were finely chopped and mixed with soft cooked egg. The red juice oozing out of the tomatoes was very nice. When I took a bite, the taste spread out softly. The fried eggs were just right, and above all, the ripe sweetness of the tomatoes was good. It was the best tomato egg I had ever eaten.

I asked how she made such a delicious tomato egg.

“Let’s see. I just made it as usual.”

My teacher seemed to be wondering why I asked such a thing.

“You have to choose the tomatoes well. If they’re not ripe yet, they’re not tasty.”

“It’s important to choose the right ingredients. So what seasonings did you use?”

I cut to the core of the problem.

“I fried it in lard, so it tastes good, doesn’t it?”

“Ah, I see. It was the lard.”

I was happy. At last, I had found the answer.

“It’s just ordinary homemade lard. And a little salt I guess. I’m not doing anything special.”

“Thank you teacher. Among Chinese food, I love stir fried tomatoes and egg the most.”

When I said that without thinking, she laughed happily.

“Stir fried tomatoes and egg is one of the cheapest side dishes around these times. It’s also the easiest to make.”

“No, of course I also like to eat carp and duck as well. But in Japan, I rarely have the chance to eat it.”

I thought I had said something bad and quickly apologised.

“Well, that’s good. If you like it, then eat some more.”

The dishes made by the old auntie teacher were all delicious, not just the tomato egg. She said that her husband was a good cook and had taught her how to make it. She went back into the kitchen to serve the next dish. One after another, she served various dishes.

When she settled down,

“By the way, is your husband not here today?”

I asked.

“He’s gone to the temple.”

“To visit?”

“To worship. My husband is a Hui. It’s a fasting month for Muslims right now. He should be praying hard right now.”

The Hui are an Islamic ethnic group in China and they look almost the same as the Han Chinese. Yunnan province, where I studied, was one of the regions in China with relatively more Hui. In China, there had been several oppressions and purgings of Muslims throughout history and many of them had fled to other areas.

“Does your husband stay at a temple for the entirety of Ramadan?”

“That’s right. When he’s not around, I can spend my time leisurely and take it easy.”

She had a relieved expression. In the past in Japan, there had been a popular TV commercial that said “Everything is fine when the husband isn’t home”, but it looked like it was the same in other countries.

“If teacher’s husband is a Muslim, is teacher also a Muslim? I heard that Muslims have to marry believers, and if the one they marry isn’t a believer, they have to convert to Islam.”

I asked, thinking that she was Han Chinese.

“I’m not a Muslim. I don’t want to go to a temple and fast. It’s boring. Whether to convert or not depends on the person, but I’m not interested in religion, so I didn’t want to convert. I don’t care if he does it if it likes being shut up in a temple. He does what he wants and I do what I want. But, I usually can’t make pork dishes. I can cook them, but he doesn’t eat them and I can’t eat them by myself. That’s why I usually just eat chicken and beef.”

“So what kind of fat is lard made from? Is it from cows?”

“It’s from pigs.”

“When your husband is around, do you use lard for cooking?”

“I still use it. Strictly speaking, it’s not allowed. But that’s okay. He doesn’t care about it.”

When the religions of a couple are different, it can become difficult to follow strict rules in daily life. Perhaps it was better to be vague with the rules rather than following them strictly. Speaking of Islam, you might imagine it to be strict. But just like how Buddhism and Christianity have various forms of religion, so does Islam.

The old auntie said that she wasn’t religious. She didn’t even visit graves. She loved her parents, but it was enough for her to hold those feelings in her heart. She was also fine if her ashes were just scattered when she died, she didn’t need a grave. China was an interesting country where an avid Muslim man and an atheist woman were married together. There were many unimaginable couples living together in different ways. Should I say that the chaos made things interesting?

Now, I wanted to make homemade lard, but I didn’t know how. Lard was sold commercially, but the taste wasn’t that good. Chemical flavouring and additives impaired the natural taste. In short, it was a flavourless taste. If I asked the old auntie, I would be able to get some lard, but I wanted to make it myself. So in the end, I decided to get a local friend to help make the lard.

I went to a nearby farmers market to buy some lard.

In the pork corner, fresh pork fillets were sold. Each shop butchered and sold whole pigs, so aside from pork loin, they also sold pork liver, kidneys, hearts, trotters, ears and tails. Of course, they also sold lard.

There are many shops in the market, but I always choose which one to buy from. Otherwise you can spend a lot of money. Go around and look for shops with reasonable prices, and if you think you can trust them, buy it there. I’m a good customer, so I don’t try to fool around with the shop. I was buying pork at a shop where the owner seemed to be good natured. If I didn’t know how to choose the meat or chose poorly, he would give me advice like “Don’t take that piece. This one is better”.

I bought about 2kg of affordable white lard.

Cleaning and opening it up in a sink at the boarding lodge, I cut it up with a kitchen knife. I quickly threw the blocks of lard into a preheated wok.

A lot of oil smoke rose along with the loud sound of sizzling fat.

I’ve heard many apartment owners say that they didn’t like renting out rooms to Chinese because it would become greasy, but I now know why it would become greasy. Chinese food can be pretty oily, but making their own lard was also a big reason.

I was choking from the smoke that had already risen and hurriedly opened the kitchen windows.

Eventually the smoke dissipated and the fat began to melt. My friend cut some pork into small pieces and added it to the pan. If there was a little bit of meat, the lard would have the flavour of meat and become a bit more fragrant. When making Chinese soup with lard, it was said that the taste of soup would be much better if there were a few pieces of meat. I was worried that the meat would go bad, but it wasn’t a problem. It could be preserved if fried in lard. As expected of the wisdom of life.

The contents of the wok were transferred into a small aluminium pan. The lard hadn’t all melted yet so I put it on low heat and let it simmer.

As the pieces of lard melted and the pieces became smaller, the amount of amber coloured oil gradually increased. 

The next morning, when I took the lid off the aluminium pan, the fat had completely cooled and the white lard had formed again. It felt good.

That evening, I immediately tried to make tomato egg.

I bought eggs and ripe tomatoes in the market.

I cut the tomatoes and sprinkled them with salt. I beat the eggs and got everything ready.

I scooped up some lard. The trick was to use plenty without being stingy.

When the lard was fried, a fragrant scent rose. I poured in the beaten egg, made it puff up and then threw in the tomatoes. I quickly dropped it to low heat. Without being lazy, I stirred it evenly.

In less than 3 minutes, the tomato egg was cooked. This time, it looked like it was made nicely.

I dished it up while it was still hot.

I brought the hot and steamy tomato egg to my mouth.

I wanted to say it was perfect, but that would be exaggerating it. It couldn’t match the tomato egg made by the old auntie teacher. But, it tasted like tomato egg. It also looked like it. I wonder if that was already good for a beginner. I couldn’t get too greedy. It was great progress just to be able to make tomato egg with my own hands. I was satisfied.

The secret of how to make delicious stir fried tomatoes and egg was lard. If you used plenty of lard, tomato egg would be cooked well. If it were used in other side dishes, you would be able to feel the taste of Chinese stir fried meat and vegetables.

If you think about it, lard is the basis of Chinese food. Speaking of Japanese cooking, it’s like learning to use mirin. Just like if you don’t use mirin, food doesn’t taste Japanese, whether it’s boiled or stir fried, if you don’t use lard, it won’t have the taste of Chinese food. I had been thinking about how to make tomato egg without thinking of the basic seasonings that form the basis of Chinese cuisine in the first place.

In sport, it’s the movement of the legs. In literature, it’s daily reading and thinking. In Chinese food, it was how to use lard. The basics are important.

The three year long mystery was finally over.

 

The End.