Stir Fried Spinach with Salted Egg

Having made a few salted eggs at home, I couldn’t wait to try how they tasted like and made several traditional Chinese dishes with them. My dear readers, when you read this post, please don’t take the said sentence word by word literally, even though I intended to cook some traditional Chinese dishes. Truly, the dish I share today came from a very popular traditional one, yet I changed a lot in the way of using ingredients and cooking.

When it comes to stir frying spinach, both century egg (皮蛋) and salted egg（鹹蛋）are widely used in order to create a combination of silver-like and golden colours mingled with jade-like spinach. On top of that, the dish has a very beautiful title, 金銀蛋菠菜 (literally means “Silver and Golden Eggs with Spinach”). The dish itself is quite humble, yet both the taste and name of the dish are very appealing. Well, when I cooked this dish again, I deliberately omitted the century egg. That said, many imprudent producers incorporate more poisonous lead into the curing process than before, that really puts me off. Since then, I haven’t eaten any century eggs for ages. Here comes my version, Golden Egg with Spinach.

Stir Fried Spinach with Salted Egg (Printable recipe)

Ingredients:

• 500 gm spinach
• 1 salted egg, white and yolk separated
• 2 tsp minced garlic
• 4 Tbsp chicken stock

Thickening:

• 1/4 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp cornflour
• 2 Tbsp water

Method:

1. Rinse spinach and drain well. Separate stems and leaves. Set aside.
2. Use a wok or a steamer, steam salted egg yolk over medium-high heat for about 10 to 12 minutes. Set aside.
3. Heat oil over medium-high heat in a frying pan. Saute garlic until aromatic. Make sure not to burn it, it gets bitter otherwise. Toss in spinach stems first and stir fry for a while, followed by leaves and cook until you get your preferred doneness. Set aside. Add some water if necessary while stir frying. If too much water releases after stir frying more than you need, discard the excess water.
4. In a small saucepan, pour in the chicken stock. Bring it to a boil. Add thickening and cook to your preferred consistency. Quickly stir in salted egg whites. When it turns opaque in colour, remove from heat, pour over the spinach. Cut salted egg yolk into small pieces. Sprinkle over spinach. Served hot.

Notes:

• You don’t need to add any salt when stir frying spinach because the salted egg has enough salty flavour. You still can add more if you need.
• You can blanch spinach in boiling water instead of stir frying.