Lijiang (丽江）is a beautiful old cobbled city in Yunnan Province in China’s Southwest. I saw the Lijiang Yunnan restaurant while I was walking to the school the other day. Tom and I have been to try it out twice since.
The first time was a bit underwhelming, because it’s a Chinese only menu with no pictures, so it’s hard to guess what the food will be like if you don’t know the cuisine. Today I managed to make up for last time, by ordering way too much very good food. We had the restaurant’s signature dish – Pineapple rice that came in a pineapple, Kunming old style tofu, a potato dish and an egg and tomato dish (西红柿炒鸡蛋 xihongshi chao jidan)  that appears on almost every menu in China (I followed the golden rule of always order one thing you know). Lots of leftovers to bring home, as you can imagine.
Tonight I made some Mapo Dofu to go with the leftovers and although this time I made it from a packet, I did once learn to make it from scratch in a reastaurant in Chengde. So I’ll tell you the story and post the recipe on a day when I have made it from scratch and can share a more fine tuned recipe.
Today's recipe can be 西红柿炒鸡蛋 xihongshi chao jidan. Even though we ate the restaurant version today,  I’ll post the recipe I learned in my Chinese class and tested in my very own kitchen for homework! You can put this dish with any other simple Chinese fare, like the mapo dofu we had tonight. It's usually eaten with rice.

Stir-fried tomato and egg (西红柿炒鸡蛋 xihongshi chao jidan):
Ingredients:
Two eggs
Two large juicy tomatoes (sometimes I use a punnet of cherry tomatoes instead)
One spring onion
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
vegetable oil for frying
Optional:  a little sugar and chicken stock.

What to do:
Cut tomatoes into large cubes, set aside.
Slice spring onions, set aside.
In a separate bowl, whisk eggs lightly. You can add a little salt and pepper at this stage.
Heat pan / wok and add the vegetable oil.
Add the eggs and fry for 1-2 minutes. You can stir them to break them up a little bit, but they shouldn’t be scrambled like an English Breakfast.
Remove the eggs from the pan and set aside.
Reheat pan and add a little more oil.
When the oil is hot, add the spring onion and then the tomatoes. Stir-fry for 3-5 minutes. Sometimes I add just a little bit of chicken stock to make it nice and saucy, but this is entirely optional and not in the original recipe. You can also add a little sugar if the tomatoes are a bit sour.
The very last step is to add the eggs to the tomato sauce and it’s done.

I’m told almost every Chinese person can make this dish :0)

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