Reading Chinese Menus: Dishes: 蕃茄炒蛋 — fān qié chǎo dàn — stirfried eggs with tomatoes

[kake]

Today's dish rather breaks the mould of what British people (at least) might expect from a "stirfry". 蕃茄炒蛋 (fān qié chǎo dàn) translates directly as "stirfried [炒] eggs [蛋] with tomatoes [蕃茄]", and this is pretty much exactly what it is.

It's a fairly simple dish, really, and though I've seen it on quite a few restaurant menus, it's also easy enough to cook at home — I often have it for a quick lunch on a weekday, served over plain rice. iLearn Culture says that it's probably the most common dish seen on family dinner tables in China.

I've also seen it listed on menus as 蕃茄炒雞蛋 (fān qié chǎo jī dàn), which is the same thing but emphasising the fact that it's a chicken (雞) egg, and as 蕃茄蛋飯 (fān qié dàn fàn), which is the same thing but served with rice. Remember also that 蕃茄 and 番茄 (both pinyinised as fān qié) are used interchangeably on menus, and you may also see a different word used for tomato: 西紅柿 (xī hóng shì).

The recipe I use is Rasa Malaysia's tomato eggs (though I like to cook the tomatoes a bit longer than she does, and I also peel them first unless I'm feeling lazy). Food Mayhem's tomato fried eggs recipe omits the spring onions, while Beijing Made Easy's version also omits the spring onions but adds garlic. Finally, the eGullet thread on tomato eggs has some discussion of the different ways to make the dish.

(The photo at the top of this post is of the version served at Royal Palace; it has a rather higher proportion of tomato than I usually use.)

Edit: and checking my RSS reader now, I see that Sunflower and Appetite For China both posted about tomato eggs at around the same time I did — now there's a coincidence!

Recipes linked in this post:

• iLearn Culture: Scrambled eggs with tomato
• Rasa Malaysia: Tomato eggs (蕃茄炒蛋/西红柿炒蛋)
• Food Mayhem: Tomato fried eggs
• Beijing Made Easy: Egg and tomato
• Sunflower Food Galore: Scrambled egg with tomato 西紅柿炒雞蛋 (番茄炒蛋)
• Appetite For China: Stir-fried tomato and eggs

Related posts:

• 茄 (qié/aubergine),
• 炒 (chǎo/stirfry),
• 蛋 (dàn/egg)

If you have any questions or corrections, please leave a comment (here's how) and let me know (or email me at kake@earth.li). See my introductory post to the Chinese menu project for what these posts are all about.

Comments

[laughingrat]

Oo, that sounds tasty.

[kake]

It is! I didn't realise how much I would like it before the first time I tried it, but now it's one of my favourite egg dishes (in any cuisine).

[ex_pinetree696]

Interesting! I don't think I've ever heard it referred to as 番茄炒蛋, but almost exclusively as 柿子炒鸡蛋 or 鸡蛋炒柿子. Probably just a regional thing, though.

This is one of my favorite dishes. My mother-in-law will often include green peppers and onions when she makes it, though I prefer just the plain ole egg and tomato. I also prefer more tomato than egg. I hate it when people add sugar to this dish!

[thorfinn]

Gack! Sugar! Yeah, hate that too. Tomatoes are sweet enough. :-)

I like to crush some garlic in the wok before putting the oil in, and maybe some dried chilli flakes or chopped fresh ones if I want more kick.

[kake]

Sometimes the tomatoes are not quite sweet enough :) I love the idea of adding chilli; will try that next time I make it.

[ex_pinetree696]

I'm no expert of course, but I feel this dish is better when it's slightly bitter or even a little sour. Adding sugar tends to ruin it, I think. But, y'know, to each their own!

Ah, the garlic idea is great.

[kake]

Ah-ha, yes, it must be a regional thing. Though curiously enough I have three menus in my collection (from Baozi Inn, Le Wei Xiang, and Royal Palace) where 蕃茄 is used for "tomato" in some places and 西紅柿 or 柿子 is used in others!

[ex_pinetree696]

How do you get menus to add to your collection? Do you ask the waiters for an extra one or are they just the one-sheet menus that you might find stuck on a door or a car windshield or something?

Also, I can't figure out which restaurant name I like better, Renmin Gongshe or Happy Smell. Ha!

[kake]

How do you get menus to add to your collection?

I photograph them! Then I transcribe them into text files (which is good practice in itself) which I can grep.

There is actually a theory that 樂味香 is a pun on "Lewisham" (the area it's located in).

[shuripentu]

Oh wow, my (now deceased) 嫲嫲 made this all the time – it was one of her staple, signature dishes, along with 水蛋 – and I'd always assumed it was weird fusion food that she'd come up with, since nobody on the other side of my family ever made anything like it. It looked almost exactly like that photo, except she didn't take the skins off. Ah, memories. :D

To be honest, I got really, really bored of it when I was younger, but I think it's been long enough now that I could give it a go myself. ;)

[kake]

Glad I could tickle some memories for you! And I hope you do give it a go :)

I've never actually had 水蛋. Maybe I'll make some this weekend — I've been meaning to try this recipe for some time (and I do have dried scallops!)

[shuripentu]

You should! We had 水蛋 at almost every meal we ate at 嫲嫲's and we never got sick of that; the portions always had to be exactly equal, otherwise there would be War. She always made it plain with soy sauce on top; I imagine dried scallops would give the flavour a nice kick though.

[eatlovenoodles.blogspot.com]

Is it Chinese egg & tomato season? Just seen these two other posts pop up in the last day or so!

http://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/2011/04/scrambled-egg-with-tomato.html

http://appetiteforchina.com/recipes/stir-fried-tomato-eggs

From my experience, 蕃茄 is used in Cantonese whilst both 蕃茄 and 西紅柿 seem to be commonly used and are interchangeable terms in Mandarin.

[kake]

Heh, I just edited a mention of those posts into my post — the first two posts I saw when I opened the "Cooking" section of my RSS reader!

[sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com]

Hi Kake,
What a coincidence everyone is thinking of tomato and egg!

番茄 or 蕃茄 means foreign/western aubergine (Chinese thought tomatoes were aubergines). fān qié is the common term used in S E Asia, less common in China.

西紅柿 means western persimmon (cos persimmon does look like tomato). This term is common in China and maybe Taiwan but not other Chinese speaking countries in the world.

[shuripentu]

My family is from Hong Kong, and I've always heard tomatoes referred to as faan ke; 西紅柿 is totally new to me. Of course, Hong Kong is rather different from (the rest of) China, and I grew up in the North American diaspora, which presumably has its own idiosyncrasies as well.

[kake]

Thanks, Sunflower! I learned most of my Chinese from reading menus of restaurants outside China, so I suppose it's not surprising that 蕃茄 was the first term I learned.

[superpitching]

Ah, I know this dish from the DS recipe book thing "can't decide what to eat" (or something like that, I have lost the game somewhere over *there*...) - eggs scrambled with chopped tomatoes and some garlic - it says it's a typical Shanghaiese (shanghainese?) family cooking dish. I've made it a few times. It is not bad!

[kake]

I admit the main reason I ordered it in Royal Palace was because I wanted to post about it! It seemed rather a simple dish to order in a restaurant, but it was very tasty...

[tamarindandthyme.wordpress.com]

Tee hee - I add sugar to mine! I love the different ways to make it.

Saw tomatoes being served with A LOT of sugar in Beijing. Like a whole mountain of it!

[kake]

Sugar does seem to be the most contentious aspect of the dish!