Fried Rice Chinese Style

Rice...? rice... oh Rice! Some more rice!

We love to eat rice. What can be better than rice? Frankly, I can't do without it, as we have gotten so used to it as a staple. Fried rice is one of my favourite delicacies. We made Fried Rice Chinese Style and it was so very nice!

Cook it in the morning, serve at night, and it will taste truly awesome as the flavours settle into every grain of rice. Not too dry, not too salty, just the right type of food to enjoy in front of the TV.

Serves 4

Ingredient:

4 bowl of cooked rice (cook and keep in the fridge overnight)
Mixed vegetables - 1 big bowl
8 shitake mushrooms, soaked overnight. Cut into small pieces.

2 eggs - beaten
Salt and white pepper to taste

Light soy sauce
Dark soy sauce for colouring
3 tbs olive oil
2 red onions & 5 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 red onions for fry onions

Nasi Goreng Chinese Mix (I used Seri-Aji Brand)

Instructions:

At medium high heat, fry onions and garlic with olive oil, until caramelised, i.e. turns slightly brown. Add in mix vegetables, mushrooms and some salt, continue stirring for 2 mins or until vegetables and mushroom are almost dry. Push aside the vegetables to create a well, pour in the eggs, fry until they solidify. Then stir into the vegetables, breaking them up.

Put in rice, stir until even, add Nasi Goreng Chinese Mix (packaged fried rice flavour powder) and some dark soy sauce for colouring. Continue frying for 5 mins.
Taste, season with white pepper and light soy sauce when needed.

For garnishing (and for extra calcium)

Fry diced onions and Ikan Bilis (Anchovies) to go along with. I used a small pot with cover, pour in some oil. Heat up the oil, fry the onions and Ikan Bilis seperately, allowing the moisture to escape as steam. They should be done when they are golden brown.

Optional : I added some leftover macademia nuts for a crunchy twist.

It came out wonderful! Rice was just nice, mushroom tastes like meat, there was crisp from the Ikan Bilis, fried onions and nuts. Here are some important tips I can share with you for a great fried rice meal. The rice should be firm (al dente), not too dry, leave in fridge overnight for best result. The vegetables, in particular, should not be wet, if not the rice would turn out soggy.

When stir-frying over high heat, continuously fold over the rice from the bottom, so as to prevent any burnt ingredients building up. Try some of the toasted rice pieces from the bottom, they taste heavenly!

Steamed Cod Fish

Our simple All-in-one dish today is Steamed Cod Fish, just put everything together in a Corning Ware and press the auto-steam function of the microwave. Done!

After taking a shower, it will be cooked just nice in less than 5 min. Look at the picture, you will know what I mean.

Ingredients:
Chili, sliced
Ginger, sliced
Tomatoes, wedged
Enoki mushroom, washed
Cod fish, washed
Prawn, cleaned (optional)

Sauces:
1 tbsp bean paste
1 – 2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp Chinese wine (Shao Xing)

Garnish:
Chinese coriander

Method: Auto-steam using microwave oven.
Nowadays, the microwave oven is so idiot-proof...suits me. :p With its help, I can cook whatever dishes I like. Make a pizza? Easy! Cook curry? No problem! Steaming fish? Auto-sensor and steam it.

Forget about those days when you need to pour water inside a big wok and steam with a big cover. In our home, we do not have this kind of luxury ‘space’ to put the wok and its cover.

In addition, it also comes with 2 cookbooks, with a Chinese version each! Not bad huh? But the most important thing is to buy a convection microwave oven, because it has grilling and baking functions. Despite its smaller size, I can fit a full duck in with space to spare. Never tried a turkey though. Thus, it usually costs a bit more, roughly S$350 to a few thousand bucks, but my Sharp model is reasonably cheap and good at S$399.

Oh yeah, I can put whatever things on top of it to air-dry too, knife, scissor, gloves, ice-cream scoop….

After 3.5 years, it is still serving us well.

Here is one to the oven! :-P