champorado blogger: Fried Rice

(leftover steamed rice works best for fried rice.)

It is so easy making fried rice. Not to mention the fact that it is the best way to use up leftover steamed rice!

Leftover rice works best for several reasons. First, because this is relatively dry and will absorb most of the seasonings you put. Second, the rice grains are much easier to separate once they have cooled.

You can use whatever leftover meat or fish or even vegetables as the flavoring for your fried rice. But I usually use fresh ingredients when I make some as I like having a “theme” to my dish.

Today, I made some mixed dried seafood fried rice with preserved mustard and mushrooms. Quite a long name, only because I named almost everything that’s in it!

I a small saucepan I boiled some dried seafood: shrimp, scallops and cut up dried squid (make sure you use the skinless “premium” dried squid or don’t bother at all!). I also tossed in some dried mushrooms. I find it easier and less messy to cut up the squid and mushrooms using kitchen shears prior to boiling. Add enough water to cover and boil for 30 minutes or so, just until the scallops fall apart into threads and the other seafood are tender.

Drain seafood and cut up the shrimp into small bits. You can boil off the rest of the liquid until you have around ½ cup.

For this dish, I also used up some preserved mustard. I refuse to call them pickled mustard as some Pinoys would translate “burong mustasa” as such. Firstly, they were not preserved in a sour liquid. Nor were they fermented. Rather, they are merely salted and allowed to “cure” for a couple of days.

Remove mustard from the bottle, rinse with water and squeeze. Then cut them up to small pieces.

I a large wok, heat around 2 tablespoons oil. I prefer using a non-stick pan as this would consume less oil. Sauté 3 cloves chopped garlic, one thumb-size piece of ginger chopped or cut into slivers, one medium onion sliced. Sauté until fragrant. Add the boiled dried seafood and the mustard. You would need around two to three tablespoons dried seafood and around the same amount of chopped mustard. You need to cook the mustard until its color has changed to a bright green, around a minute.

Add in three to four cups leftover steamed rice. Mix thoroughly. Season with one tablespoon chicken powder (substitute chicken bouillon cube), two tablespoons oyster sauce or soy sauce and some pepper. Add also some of the cooking liquid from the dried seafood. If using a bouillon cube, dissolve it in this liquid prior to adding. I never add salt as the previous two are already salty. Stir fry until well-mixed.