Chinese Traditional Meals

Many stories arise from the simple ingredients of our Chinese Continental Breakfast. The two dishes I made were tofu mixed with diced Chinese sausages, as well as diced sausages and ginger egg omelet. There is history behind all these ingredients; the Chinese sausage, which was produced in the dynasty era. Tofu, which replaces meat for Buddhists as a source of protein starting centuries ago. Going to ginger, it is believed to be the oldest flavoring ingredient since the beginning of the Chinese history. For American Born Asian Americans, they are usually influenced by the American life styles and often forget their heritage. Home to me, describes a place where you are able to learn your parent's culture and traditions. And as we do that, we use our judgments to determine the accuracy of it and decide whether or not to follow the tradition. I believe the ingredients I used perfectly expresses the tradition and culture I believe in combining it with the American Culture I have adapted to. The long history of these ingredients can be carried on by Asian Americans as long they are willing to adapt themselves to these traditions.

Some Ingredients for the Chinese Continental Breakfast include:
3 teaspoon of vegetable oil
3 blocks of hard tofu
2 sticks of Chinese Sausages
5 Eggs
1/2 cup of shredded ginger

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Iron Chef, Asian American Style!

As one of our first group projects, we were to envision ourselves to be Iron Chefs and create an American dish adding a twist from our assigned ethnic group, Chinese American. We came up with a list of ideas but didn't want to do anything common or a dish another group might make. We thought of the traditional American breakfast. It seemed pretty typical, but we decided to go for it because we didn't have much time and thought it would fit in great since our class was in the morning. For the traditional American breakfast, there can be bacon, eggs, sausage, potatoes or hashbrowns. For our "Chinese" Continental Breakfast, we had a sausage, ginger and egg omelet, tofu mixed with sausages, slices of pork and a fried rice hash brown. Alvin and Ryan were our chefs and were able to cook what they could the night before to bring into the class the next morning. The rest of the group researched some background information on the ingredients and it's history to add in our presentation. For the Iron Chef match, we were paired up with the Just So Sick Girls, Vietnamese American group, who made a type of Vietnamese sandwich. We had about a minute to plate our dish and 3-5 minutes to present it. After the judges tasted our dishes, the rest of the class had the chance to taste it as well. In the end, they tallied up the points and we came out to be the winners! This project was really interesting and fun to see what dishes the other groups came up with and their competitiveness to become the ultimate Iron Chef, Asian American style!

- Angelie