Fried Rice. Just Ordinary Fried Rice This Time

This isn’t really a recipe post; I just thought I’d share pictures of my dinner from last night.  No special reason, but it’s nice to have little chats sometimes that don’t have any clear purpose.

I used frozen spinach.  Ech, I know, but there were no vegetables in my house.  Not  a single little leaf or sprout.  I guess my family no longer eats vegetables, with the exception of my dad who keeps these gross frozen packages of peas and corn–my least favorite foods.  I’m absolutely going to Whole Foods this weekend and getting peppers and bok choy and onions…  It will be great.

Also, tofu.  I’m sort of fascinated by it.

That top egg (I rotated the picture… hmm, what happened) was way larger than any of the others in the carton, and I found out when I cracked it into the frying pan.  Twin yolk!  Whooooo!

Well I was excited anyway.

It’s just… those little things, those little surprises that mean absolutely nothing but are still absurdly delightful just because they’re little and they’re surprises.  Something you couldn’t have expected even if you’d tried.  I like things like that.

It’s 95 degrees right now and I’m sitting on the patio in the back of my house in a bathing suit, which I have never done before.  But it’s disgustingly hot, and the idea of wearing actual clothes makes me want to dig a hole deep, deep underground where it’s cool and dark and stay there forever.

I had a sort of experimental iced mocha that I made, homemade soda, and pineapple so far. I’m not even really hungry, which is disappointing because I had plans for today.  Plans in the shape of homemade falafel and hummus.

By homemade I mean from boxed mixes because I found some in my cupboard last night when I was looking for rice.  They’re probably from six years ago when we went to Israel, but I feel like that stuff doesn’t really expire…  I guess I’ll find out, right?

Also, as you can see, I got to use the wok.  It was

Intense.

So was washing it, but not in a good way.

Ugggh washing it was such a pain.

But woks are very cool.  I’ve never used one before.  I may have to get one for the apartment because I have this problem where I throw food everywhere when I’m trying to make dinner, and you can’t do that with a wok because of the depth of the pan.  A+ design.

I added one of these noodle nests, too.  I misread the directions and tried to add the nest straight to the wok, not realizing that I did indeed have to boil it first.

This probably seems obvious to you, but you know what, sometimes a person just isn’t thinking.

And this is what I came up with!  Using the fancy chopsticks I brought back from Japan for my dad.

Man, I want to go back to Japan so badly.  But China first…

Those brown tubular things are, as the bag labels them, Chinese noodles.  They’re just fried noodles I suppose… I grew up eating them, but I’ve never actually seen them anywhere else now that I think about it.

Anyway, I will let you get back to your life, and I will go back to James Mann’s The China Fantasy.

Up next: an actual recipe post!

The Most Epic Fried Rice Ever

You think I’m kidding?  You think I’m exaggerating?  You don’t even know what’s about to hit you.

Yesterday Haley and I tried this crazy think called cooking, rather than doing our usual baking thing.  We were inspired by the crates of rice at Whole Foods that we admired last week and that I like to stick my hands into (like Amélie).  So we knew we wanted to make rice, and thusly consulted Pitchfork.  Haley found this recipe, which we adapted the hell out of.  According to the recipe, the rice should look like this:

 (image from the site linked above)

Wait until you sees ours.  Just wait.  Maybe you think I’m hyping this up too much, but you weren’te there for the making of this rice, so I see why you wouldn’t quite understand.

It’s okay.  You will.

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 of tofu (which I just saw.  We use the whole block. Haha… oops.)
• 1 cup of white rice (we used Basmati), cooked
• 1 cup of black rice (we used Chinese), cooked
• 2 handfuls of bok choy (or baby bok if you are so inclined (we were)), stems and leaves sliced thinly
• 4-5 spring onions or whatever onions you like/can find, since Whole Foods had a dearth of spring onions, diced into little rounds
• 2-3 Tablespoons of Soy sauce or more if you are a sodium fiend
• 1-2 Tablespoons of Rice Vinegar
• Garlic paste, add to taste
• One packet of Gobi Aloo seasoning mix (whatever that’s called… you can find it in the international aisle in Whole Foods)

Here’s how you do it:

Press the tofu.  I mean, press it.  A lot.  We had no idea what this meant, having never used tofu before.  The guy at the cash register told us that we really had to press it dry, or the outside would cook well and the inside would just taste like mushy tofu.  Which is true!  Oops.  You can google how to press tofu like we did.  What a pain.

This is how Haley feels about raw tofu.

This is not how press tofu by the way.

I was fascinated by this thing, so I took a lot of pictures.

While you’re pressing that, scramble the eggs.  When they’re just barely cooked, put them into a small dish and set aside.

In as much oil as you like, sear the tofu on all sides on medium-high heat.  While it’s searing, add the curry powder and salt to taste.  Once the tofu has browned, put that in a small dish also and set it aside.

Then fry the rice on medium-high heat.

This was before we cooked it, right after straining.  Isn’t it gorgeous?

Spread it around until it coats the bottom of the pan, making sure all the rice is soaked in oil.  (If you’re frying without oil… what are you doing.)  Wait for a few minutes and then scrape it all into the middle, mixing it well.  Spread it back out and wait for another few minutes.  Do this until it’s browned.

The rice actually was more purple than this, by the way.  I don’t know what happened to the picture.

Add the soy sauce, rice vinegar, and garlic paste.  You could use real garlic if you wanted to. It doesn’t really matter.  Anyway, mix that around.  Add the bok choy and cook until the leaves are a bit wilted.

Add in the tofu, eggs, and spring onions.

Onions.

Didn’t I tell you it waas epic?  This rice.  This rice.

Is purple.  And tastes like soy sauce and curry.  The greens are perfect, also, because they really offset the strong, salty flavors of the shit ton of spices we used.

Yes.