Monday, June 19, 2006

Sunday Dinner

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Tonight Chez Jellifer is serving shrimp fried rice, spicy soft tofu soup, sliced avocado with wasabi and soya sauce, cubed tofu and sprouts with a sesame miso dressing, ubiquitous kimchi, and eggplant sauteed in wine and oyster sauce with sesame.

Everything was pretty good and I've got lots of leftovers for breakfast and dinner tomorrow! I wish, though, that I could make fried rice like they do at the Chinese restaurants here (or anywhere, for that matter.) Mine is always either more mushy than I want - or cooked too long and "crunchy" which hurts me teeth, argh! How do the restaurants make it so yummy? Do they use a lot of oil? MSG? What's the secret?

3 comments:

Sarah and Tiggy said...

Here are a couple tips for fried rice: Make sure the rice is cold. It's best to use rice cooked the day before, or else cook it then stick it in the fridge until it's cold. That should help your sticky rice problem! Also, a lot of the time the oil they use for fried rice is 'used'. The oil could be from a deep fryer, where it has absorbed the flavors of the food fried in it. It's part of the reason the rice tastes so good! Good Luck!

Maven said...

Hot wok.
Hot oil.
Cold rice.
Have everything ready to go at the same time (a mise-a-place, as they call it).

One cool way to reuse left over fried rice is to put it in little oven safe casseroles/ramekins (buttered or otherwise oiled), and press an indentation in the center to form a nest, and crack an egg in it, and bake it. Top with whatever you want... cheese or scallions or minced up bacon, etc. Great idea for morning after...

Jelly said...

Thanks Sarah! Sounds yummy, Maven - the baked rice dish. I make a delicious salmon quiche with a rice crust (similar idea) back in Canada. Unfortunately I haven't had an oven since I've been in Asia!