Original Flavor Planet
To say that scrambled eggs with tomatoes are orthodox Lu dishes, Beijinger Lao She was the first to disagree.
“… In recent years, "tomato" has actually been on the menu, and it has gradually invaded Chinese restaurants from British and French restaurants, and even Shandong restaurants have to report "tomato shrimp silver (benevolence)"! Cultural aggression can't be stopped by front teeth! In 1935, the 36-year-old Lao She complained in a column in Qingdao's "Minbao". This thing, especially on the leaves, has some unpleasant stench — in the words of Peiping, which is called "green smell." ”
Yes, Lao She thinks that this invasive species of tomatoes is stinky and far worse than Chinese cuisine.
After a week, he was so angry that he wrote another article, but this time the language style was a little more restrained, "Qingdao is a place rich in foreign flavor, foreigners, foreign houses, foreign medicines, onions, garlic... Looking at the ocean by the sea... This should come to tomatoes, and this cabbage too. With a seemingly gentle knife, he scolded the foreign and flattering atmosphere formed in Qingdao at that time.
In fact, whether it is a tomato or a tomato, its foreign origin is declared in the name. It's just that what people didn't expect was that not long ago, just 100 years ago, whether to eat or not was still related to patriotism. - Not to mention scrambled eggs with tomatoes, what can bring these two "rare" and "treasures" together at that time has almost to be a rich man who has seen the world.
This national home dish, which is known as the Chinese, may not be as old as your grandfather, isn't it surprising? And... It's still Western food.
Like the hometown peppers, tomatoes also landed in southern China by sea in the last years of the Ming Dynasty. Faced with a species that has never been seen before, it takes time to go from unfamiliar to familiar.
The people who really brought the trend of eating tomatoes to China were foreigners who came to China. Whether it was a missionary who crossed the ocean to China to preach, or a merchant who followed a trade ship to China to buy tea and silk, they would also grow some of their own hometown vegetables after living in the area allowed by the government at that time, and tomatoes were the most important of them. Those foreign compradors who came into contact with foreigners, or domestic servants in foreigners' homes, and intellectuals who studied abroad, were probably the first people in modern China to start eating tomatoes.
"Tomatoes... The first taster feels unhappy, but it is also a necessary vegetable food in Ouxi...", in 1933, a new farmer wrote an article in Changzhou's "Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Monthly" to express his feelings about eating tomatoes for the first time. In the same year in Beijing, a man named Li Jun also wrote a book called Tomato Research, sharing his experience of growing, cultivating and eating tomatoes in a vegetable garden in Beijing's Dongcheng District.
● Recommendations for eating tomatoes in Tomato Research
"Eating tomatoes is the progress of human dietary civilization", he wrote in the book, "every Chinese must strive to eat tomatoes in order to improve civilization and health." So how do you work hard to eat? Li Jun introduced traditional Western practices such as making jam, canned food, and cold salad, as well as... Mix Chinese and Western to make a stir-fry:
"Tomatoes can also be added to stir-fry, one is to add tomatoes to taste, which is suitable for meat, fish and shrimp; One is to cut the tomato into pieces, such as fried duck with shredded meat and tomatoes, the best way to eat is to use fat beef slices, and put them last when stir-frying, because tomatoes are not easy to overripe. ”
From these practices, we don't know whether Li Jun is a master of cooking or not, after all, after reading this information, I tried very hard to imagine what "fried duck with shredded meat and tomato" could be? But we can at least infer that at this time (1933~1936 period), the awareness of tomatoes among the majority of Chinese people is still very low, and the phenomenon of scrambled eggs into CP is completely gone.
● In the 20s of the last century, a newspaper in Shanghai popularized the science of eating tomatoes
There are no surviving newspaper reports that tell us exactly how the eggs and tomatoes met and fell in love (but certainly not Puyi) when they met and fell in love (but certainly not Puyi). Exploring the story of eggs and tomatoes is more like a Sherlock Holmes-style decryption deduction, which needs to be re-assembled from the clues.
Lao She's article is a clue. Before 1940, there were indeed many concessions in various parts of China, where in addition to authentic, only foreigners' Western restaurants, there were also many Chinese Western restaurants - they had a similar Western dining environment, but the dishes were modified with Chinese tastes, from the owner to the chef to the waiter were also Chinese, and the Chinese guests who were interested in Western food culture were also served.
For example, borscht was popularized by Belarusians in the French Concession in Shanghai, and was improved by the "Shandong Gang", which was mainly engaged in kitchen work in Shanghai. Shanghai writer Shen Jialu wrote, "Among the chefs of the "Shandong Gang", there are also chefs who have opened Russian restaurants on their own, especially Donghua, Xinghu, and Chunjiang, which are the most well-known." The same is true of Shanghai hot soy sauce, which was formerly known as Worcestershire hot soy sauce in the United Kingdom.
There is no lack of tomato elements in these improved dishes. The first meeting of tomatoes and eggs on Chinese soil should also be on the table in a certain concession area. The chef from China, perhaps while making an English breakfast for his British employer, learned to scramble eggs in butter while pan-frying tomatoes and hot baked beans in ketchup, and made a note of the combination; Or maybe when you make an omelette for your French employer, you are told to pour fresh diced tomatoes over the last whole omus.
In short, it is likely that in those restaurants that only serve Western food, the Chinese learned a variety of tomato-based ingredient combinations, and after the foreigners left China, they took what they learned on themselves and took it with them to various parts of China to which they later emigrated. Some broke into the Kanto region, some stayed in the concession, and some flew into people's homes, tomatoes and eggs, and also began to try to bloom on various occasions ...
By the time it was written, tomato and eggs were already a delicious and nutritious delicacy for the general public. In Wang Zengqi's essay recalling his teaching at Southwest University, there is an article called "Scrambled Eggs":
Scrambled eggs are available all over the world. Kunming's scrambled eggs are particularly "bubbled". One flip upside down, two flip out of the pot, move the pot without spatula. Serve it hot, bright and fragrant, and make people feel appetizing. Tomato scrambled eggs, tomatoes are fried until they are broken, they still have a fragrance, they are not weak, and the eggs are in large pieces and do not die. Tomatoes are mixed with eggs, and the color is still distinct, unlike the scrambled eggs with tomatoes in the north, which are scrambled "a mess".
● On the streets of Yunnan in the middle of the last century, you can see tomato scrambled eggs
Wang Zengqi came to Kunming in 1939 to study, and lived there for a total of seven years. At that time, he could already see tomatoes and eggs on the streets of Kunming as a fried choice. Although it looks closer to a French omelette and is a complete omelet, it is enough to say that in less than ten years, tomatoes and eggs have changed from strange to familiar, and have become intellectuals like Wang Zengqi, who can be mentioned and remembered at will.
Ask the eldest person in the family to restore his childhood knowledge of tomatoes as much as possible, and then ask about eggs one step closer. You will find that the phrase "Chinese eat tomato scrambled eggs since childhood" is a bit untenable.
In the 50s of the last century, eggs had to be purchased with food stamps, and the family could not eat a few meals a year, so they were reluctant to use fried tomatoes casually. Tomatoes grow quickly, but they are only planted for fun in spring and summer, and they will definitely not become the only or main crop on small family farms.
In order for tomato scrambled eggs to enter the homes of Chinese people on a large scale, the time must come to a later period when eggs are no longer expensive and tomatoes are widely popularized. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, we introduced the production process of chemical fertilizers and pesticides from the United States, and the technology of greenhouses gradually developed. Tomatoes, a vegetable with a high yield per mu and relatively less heavy environmental requirements, have also become the main planting and promotion objects of the agricultural sector.
The production of eggs also gradually increased during this time period. We first built a large-scale national nutritious chicken farm, and then introduced the industrial chicken breeding system from the West. According to the official website of the National Bureau of Statistics, the national egg production in 1985 was only more than 500 million tons, and by 92 years it had doubled to more than 1 billion tons. Today it is even more unthinkable, with continental tomato cultivation accounting for a quarter of total global trade! "Tomato" is no longer "fan", it has been successfully naturalized in Chinese land and has become the main force of vegetable and fruit crops across the north and south of the mainland.
The reduction in the price of eggs and the sharp increase in tomato production have directly or indirectly contributed to this combination, which has become known throughout the country, further making scrambled eggs with tomatoes a regular habit. Not to mention how simple it is to do, it's just... You can learn with your hands:
Heat the iron pot, add oil, eggs or tomatoes first, no problem;
Scrambled eggs first, stir-fry tomatoes alone or two together, there is no problem;
In different places, add sugar, garlic, chopped green onions, and coriander according to your taste.
Basically, as long as it is not fried, it is almost impossible for this sweet and sour dish to be unpalatable. It has also become a favorite home-cooked dish for overseas students – whenever a foreign friend comes to their home, they will serve it. And most foreigners who have eaten scrambled eggs with tomatoes will also say: This is completely different from the taste of Chinese food in their imagination.
The first foreigners to bring tomatoes to China probably never thought that the Chinese who "mastered the skills of Yi and mastered the Yi to control the Yi" would return to the world stage with the help of tomato scrambled eggs and kill all sides.