Egg Rolls and Geo Politics: Cooking Chinese with Kids

Kids are funny, aren’t they?

I don’t know about yours, but my son’s favorite playthings are often not even toys. Give him a map and hours later you’ll find him tracing his way from Maine to California. Google maps and GeoMasters are tied as his favorite iPad apps. Neither he nor I could live without our car’s GPS; we’re simply motivated by different needs.

Maps aren’t his only geo-political obsession. I have a whole slew of his drawings of the flags of the world dating back to 2010.

Late last year, we hatched an idea that combined his love of nation states and my love of cooking. Regularly, we plan to focus on a country. We dedicated a blank book to this purpose. In it, he’ll draw the nation’s flag and pair it with a few quick facts about the selected country. For my part, he and I will cook together a meal from the country.

Starting with China, we launched our project on Saturday to coincide with the country’s New Year. We made Egg Rolls and Shrimp Toast from scratch and enjoyed Stir-Fried Hoisin Pork with Peppers from Grace Young’s Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge.

Chicken Egg Rolls


A few years ago, I comandeered a few my mom's old cookbooks including The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook by Gloria Bley Miller, and this recipe is adapted from one in that book.

Makes 10

Raw ingredients

2 tablespoons dried porcini
1/4 pound chicken breast
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon tamari
2 1/2 cups bean sprouts
4 cups fresh spinach, loosely packed, sliced into 1-inch ribbons
The greens of 2 scallions, finely chopped
2 tablespoons tamari
2 tablespoons peanut oil
Egg roll skins
Vegetable oil for frying
Sweet and Sour Sauce for dipping

Soak the mushrooms in hot water.

Cut the chicken breast into very thin strips. Combine cornstarch, sugar, salt, and tamari in a small bowl. Add the chicken strips and stir to coat. Let the chicken sit for 10 minutes.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Blanch the bean sprouts in the water for 2 minutes. Drain.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a saute pan over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cook a few minutes or until it's no longer pink. Remove from the pan and let cool on a small plate.

Fresh filling ingredients

Cooked filling

Heat remaining oil in the pan. Add the scallions and saute for a minute. Dump in the bean sprouts and spinach and cook until the spinach is softened. Return the chicken to the pan and stir together all the ingredients.

Scrape the mixture into a colander and let drain while it cools.

Heat a large pot filled with several inches of vegetable oil over high heat.

Fill egg roll skins according to package. Set the filled egg rolls onto a plate.

When the oil reaches 375-F degrees. Add 3 egg rolls at a time to the pot. Cook until the egg rolls are golden brown. Drain and serve hot with sweet and sour sauce.

Cooking Cucumbers with Grace Young, Chinese Cookbook Author

Photograph and Recipe Courtesy of Grace Young

A few months back, I helped out Grace Young, award-winning author of The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen and The Breath of a Wok. Grace was making her rounds promoting her newest book Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge and was organizing a media trip to Chicago. Knowing a thing or two about both the Chicago food loving and food cooking community, I gave her a few names of people to contact in conjunction with a lecture she was giving in Chinatown. To thank me, she sent me a copy of her new book.

Like The Breath of a Wok, Grace starts out with an expert review of the wok itself, making me again realize how foolish (and overpriced) my stainless steel lined, copper wok purchase was. In the introductory sections, she gives a terrific and compelling explanation of how how best to season and maintain a wok. Then, for cooks new to Chinese cuisine, she gives a terrific overview of ingredients, technique, and equipment. And in these seemingly mundane topics, Grace brings the wok to life and it then in turn compels the reader to respect it. But, in this beautifully photographed and illustrated book, the real alchemy occurs in the stories. Grace follows the wok as it crisscrosses the globe, from the Yunnan Province to Alabama, from Shanghai to Trinidad, creating new combinations and transforming local ingredients into dishes comforting and familiar to its itinerant, immigrant owners.

At the very minimum, a cookbook should provide consistent recipes for delicious food. Grace does that with ease. A great cookbook engages not just the stomach, but the mind. With her gift of story telling and ability to teach, Grace has written another book that does just that.

What Grace has also done is give me another way to use up my cucumbers. As I explained in my last post, I've had to contend with a bumper crop of cucumber this year. I was, thus, thankful to find Grace's recipe for Stir-Fried Cucumber and Pork with Golden Garlic. Thankful too was Little Locathor for whom the cucumber is a great favorite. He gave the dish an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Grace Young will be in Chicago again next weekend speaking for Culinary Historians of Chicago Saturday, Sept 25th at Kendall College at 10 am.

Stir-Fried Cucumber and Pork with Golden Garlic

1/4 cup peanut or vegetable oil
3 tablespoons chopped garlic
12 ounces lean pork shoulder, cut into 1/4-inch thick bite-sized slices
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
3 teaspoons soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 large seedless cucumber ends trimmed, halved lengthwise, and cut on the diagonal into 1/4-inch slices (about 3 cups)

In a 1-quart saucepan or a 14-inch flat-bottomed wok heat the oil over high heat until the oil registers 280 F on a deep-frying thermometer. Carefully add the garlic. Cook, stirring 30 seconds to 1 minute or until the garlic is slightly golden. Remove the saucepan from the heat. Remove the garlic with a metal skimmer and put on a plate lined with paper towels. Careful remove the oil from the wok and reserve. Wash the wok and dry it thoroughly.

In a shallow bowl combine the pork, cornstarch 1 1/2 teaspoons soy sauce and sugar and 1/4teaspoon of the salt in a small bowl combine the remaining 1 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce and 1 tablespoon cold water.

Heat 14-inch flat bottomed or 12-inch skillet over high heat until a bead of water vaporizes within 1 or 2 second of contact. Swirl in 2 tablespoons of the reserved garlic oil, add the ginger slices, then, using a metal spatula, stir-fry 30 seconds or until the ginger is fragrant. Push the ginger to the sides of the wok, carefully add the pork, and spread it evenly in one layer in the wok. Cook undisturbed 1 minute, letting the pork begin to sear. Then stir-fry 1 minute or until the pork is lightly browned but not cooked through. Add the cucumber and stir-fry 30 seconds or until well combined. Sprinkle on the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, swirl the reserved soy sauce mixture into the wok and sit fry 1 minute or until the pork is just cooked and the cucumber begins to wilt. Stir in the reserved garlic.

Serve warm over rice.