Fried Rice

This is one of my all time fav comfort foods (there're also kwaychap and black fried carrot cake).

my earliest memory of it was a rather mushy, tomato-y version with small shrimps and luncheon meat cubes. as my sis n i are totally off garlic (we'd actually throw up should our rice contain a shard of garlic), my mom wld do up the non garlic version. the only gripe i have is that she cld never quite produce the version that we so very like at the 煮炒 stalls....the ones with the salty 鍋味, miserly bits of 叉燒, eggs, carrots, peas and not-too-fresh prawns. it's very much later that i realised some of these stalls too used chicken rice for the base ingredient.

much has been said about fried rice. and the permutation to the recipe is countless, even Harlem Yu sang about it. essentially a dish concocted to clear leftovers is also one of the most challenging to make cos its all about infusing flavour into the mundane steamed white rice, keeping it nicely dry, shiny and fragrant. the leftovers are only cmplementary at best. to be honest, i haven ever gotten it quite as tasty as this round (The Wife will attest to my previous pretty disastrous attempts at rearranging the flow of ingredients). however i'd still very much like to master the 'imperial' version of fried rice one day (the one where the yolk coats the rice giving the rice a yellowish tinge all round). so here's the recipe.

ingredients:

1. steamed rice (leftovers from dinner. if its still kindda damp, microwave it to dry it up a lil, but not too dry)
2. cooking oil
3. fish sauce
4. pepper
5. salt
6. stock (chicken powder in water also can)
   
7. eggs
8. optional: chinese cooking wine
   
9. garlic &/onion/shallots finely chopped + dried shrimps (optional)
   
10. whatever u have: spam, charsiew, lap cheong, peas, carrots, etc all diced small (i'd imagine you have some raw and precooked stuff)
    
11. if you want greens, thinly sliced lettuce is good

recipe:

1. heat wok, add oil, fry eggs, scrambled. fry till about 80% cooked and set aside. it'll be quite oily but its okie cos you need this to 'polish' the rice later
   
2. add more oil if necessary, fry garlic and onion. no need to set aside.
   
3. add in other 'to cook' (ie raw) ingredients. add in stock so that there is a bit of gravy (not too much else your rice will be mushy later)
4. heap rice on top of this. you need to spread out evenly and break the rice clumps in the wok. medium heat from this point on.
   
5. add fish sauce 1st and stir fry. make sure you can smell the fragrance
   
6. add salt, pepper and stir fry. fry till your rice is dry
7. add scrambled eggs and other 'to warm up' (ie pre cooked) ingredients. just keep frying in a circular direction, evenly mixing in the eggs until they become bits amongst the rice. the oil from the eggs will polish the rice.
8. continue to stir fry. you will hear some rice crackling and its okie.
9. add a dash of chinese cooking wine towards the last bit of stir frying and off the fire
   
10. mix in the sliced lettuce and cover the wok. let the heat cook the lettuce for a bit.
11. serve in 1-2 mins