I used to live in China, and there are some things that I still miss, some things I don’t. One thing that I became very tired of in China, but now miss is fried rice.
I went to China without learning any Chinese at all, and I had to rely on others for many things, including helping me navigate food. This is complicated by the fact that I am a vegetarian (I cook meat, but act like a demented person pursuing everyone who eats it for highly detailed information on how it tastes). I wish I could have brought myself to eat meat, and I did relax things somewhat as there are certain things beyond one’s control. My life would have been much better if I could have eaten the steamed pork fat with sugar they served at my wedding with the same relish my mother did (I have tried to do an image search for what I am talking about, but I can’t find any).
The combination of these things is that I couldn’t sit down in a restaurant and make some vague mumblings about “the special” or something of that nature and eat what I got — unless I went to a vegetarian restaurant, which made me very happy indeed. This meant that I needed to actually say I wanted to eat something in particular and specify that I wanted vegetables and not meat on it, so for about six to nine months (maybe a year) I ate one of the following for lunch every day: vegetable fried wheat noodles, vegetable fried rice noodles, noodles (wheat or rice) with vegetables in soup (yes, I know the stock was not vegetarian, but you have to make choices at some point), or fried rice.
Dinners tended to be more exciting as I generally had company to help me order.
I have never been especially happy with fried rice since coming back to Canada, partly because I don’t really like peas and carrots in it. For me Chinese food is best when it is not sweet at all, except for the deep fried bananas covered in caramel sauce and custard tarts.
I have also never been very successful at making it at home. Partly because I have never been much good at making rice (I am much better since I started measuring). In China I was told some rule about your fingers to measure the water, but I never fully figured it out. It always came out too wet, which is fine for eating (though not optimal), but definately deficient for making fried rice.
Today in a pique of frustration at being home for the weekend by myself, I decided yesterday to come up with something edible and add fried rice to my repertoire. My logic is that it can’t be that hard as lots of people do it.
I started with the idea that this would be a perfect opportunity to use up the two sorry looking leeks in my fridge after seeing this recipe last week on Smitten Kitchen a few days ago; a bit of cabbage only the edges of which were turning black; and a bunch of wilted green onions. I know that doesn’t sound very good, but fried rice is food specially developed to use up leftovers.
After discarding the icky bits, I cut up the leeks, green onions, and cabbage and then some ginger, garlic, and an onion. I fried up an egg, and stirred together some soy sauce, sesame oil, and chili oil. I used a recipe for fried rice from Mama Now Cooks Like This: The Best of Susan Mendelson
I started by sauteing my onion, garlic, and ginger adding a little salt. Then I added my cabbage and leeks, then the rice. Finally I stirred in my soy sauce mixture and my cut up bits of egg and it was done.
I am most happy with what consider a brilliant success, and after eating it for lunch, I plan to eat it much more often. I will also take the leftovers for lunch this week and may even pretend I am in China.
I think my problem when I tried to do this before was that I tried to cook the egg with the rest of the dish — don’t do this, cook it separately and cut it up into bits and then add it. I am not sure this is how Chinese people do it, but it worked much better for me. Also use dry rice, preferably rice that has sat in the fridge over night — wet rice will make this very disgusting and I can pretty much guarantee you will not want to eat it. I aimed for my ideal fried rice, which is approximately half vegetables.
