Quick Fix Fried Rice

As all good Asians should know, fried rice is meant to be made with cold, day-old rice to give it the right texture. Making it with hot, freshly cooked rice is a different dish altogether (a much more delicious one).

I'm generally opposed to fried rice, but there are those desperate days when you simply cannot face another item off the McDonald's dollar menu.



For a quick fix:
2 cups of short grain rice (the sticky kind), hot or cold, new or old, definitely cooked
6-8 pieces of bacon
2 stems of scallions, finely sliced
3 eggs, beaten with a dash of milk
sesame oil
soy sauce
fish sauce

... i think it's pretty obvious where i'm going with this.

Cook the bacon over high heat til nice and crispy. Remove bacon and de-grease between paper towels. Crumble into bits.

Pour out the bacon grease, but reserve a little in the pan to cook with. Add the white part of the scallion in and cook over medium heat for 20-30 seconds. Add the eggs in and scramble until tender but not quite solid.

Add the remaining scallion and the bacon into the pan and stir appropriately. Add in cooked rice and mix thoroughly (if using old rice, it might help to add in a little bit of water to break the giant rice rocks up).

Season to taste with sesame oil, soy sauce and fish sauce. (i'd guess 1 tbsp sesame oil, 2 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tsp fish sauce).

Good variants: a diced tomato, sriracha.

三杯雞 (Three Cup Chicken)

This is my mom's take on San-Bei-Ji, which is a traditional Taiwanese dish. The three cups called for are sesame oil, rice wine, and soy sauce. Limited resources means this recipe is a little less traditional, but definitely just as delicious.

Ingredients:
12-14 chicken legs (Chop large ones into smaller pieces as necessary)
10 large shiitake mushrooms, stems off and halved
3 stalks green onions
6 cloves of garlic, minced
4-5 thin slices of ginger, skin off and julienned
1/8 cup vegetable oil, 1/8 cup sesame oil
1/2 a beer
3/4 cup soy sauce
2 tsp sugar


Chop off the base the green onion; julienne the white section of the green onion, and chop the green section into large pieces, about 1 inch long.


Heat both oils over medium high in a large pan. Once the oil is hot, add in the green onion whites, garlic, and ginger.


When the spices have released their flavor, add in the chicken. After letting cook for a minute, add in the soy sauce, beer, and sugar. Stir thoroughly, and reduce heat to medium low.


Stew for fifteen minutes.


Bring the heat back up to high, and wait for the liquid to reduce (approximately ten minutes). Add in the mushrooms and the green onion greens, and let sit for an additional 2 minutes. Serve with steamed white rice. (Serves 6-8.)