Egg Foo Yung

We decided that we'd try something new this week, and put Egg Foo Yung on the menu for tonight. After searching around online for a recipe, we found a few that gave us an idea of what we needed, and decided to use this one from AllRecipes.com as our basis.

I stopped on the way home and bought 32 cents worth of bean sprouts, which was the only thing we were missing that we wanted to include. We picked up some dried, foraged porcini mushrooms at the market, which I rehydrated with some hot water. I drained them, retaining the liquid, and added them to 4 eggs, bean sprouts, onion and scallions. Rather than try to make small, individual patties - I took the frittata approach and poured the whole mixture into my paella pan.

While that was cooking, I used the retained mushroom water and added enough vegetable broth to make 1.5 cups, and then made the sauce as described in the recipe. I'm still struggling fairly often when I work with corn starch, so I think I need to read up on the science of it to understand what I'm doing wrong. Temperature and timing, I suspect, are what's screwing me up - but I keep getting gummy lumps of corn starch, instead of it blending into the sauce evenly.

Here's the original recipe, though as I've noted, we made some alterations.

Egg Foo Yung
8 eggs, beaten
1 cup thinly sliced celery
1 cup finely chopped onion
1 cup bean sprouts
1/2 cup diced fresh mushrooms
1/3 cup chopped cooked chicken breast
1/3 cup cooked and crumbled ground beef
1/3 cup chopped cooked pork
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 cubes chicken bouillon
1 1/2 cups hot water
1 1/2 teaspoons white sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
6 tablespoons cold water
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
Beat eggs in a large bowl. Add the celery, onion, bean sprouts, mushrooms, chicken, beef, pork, salt and pepper. Mix together. Heat oil in a medium skillet or wok and brown egg mixture 1/2 cup at a time. When all of the mixture is browned, set aside. To Make Sauce: Dissolve the bouillon in the hot water in a small saucepan; add sugar and soy sauce and blend well over medium heat. Add cold water and cornstarch and stir until thick and smooth. Serve with Egg Foo Yung.