I'm Not Cooking by the Book

I haven’t made fried rice in a while and was inspired this past Sunday afternoon as I was strolling through Chinatown. I went into my favorite to-go shop and got 1 lb. of char siu, chopped up. The fried rice was made loosely following Rasa Malaysia’s Chinese fried rice recipe with the following changes:

• Substituted overnight fried rice with fresh cooked rice that was cooled down on a cookie sheet
• Instead of all the crazy sauces, I just put 2 tbsp soy sauce and 1/2 tspn sugar
• For veggies, I chopped up 1/2 lb of baby bok choy I had leftover from making wontons and 1/2 cup frozen vegetables blanched in boiling water
• 1 lb of bite size char siu, fat removed

My favorite part of the Rasa Malaysia recipe is the “egg well” that produces the perfect, fluffy, bite sized pieces of egg in the fried rice. With all my ingredients, my fried rice was pretty delicious and I made enough for leftovers and lunches this week.

The stuff surrounding the fried rice is garlic and honey glazed egg plant. I salted the eggplant slices and let them dehydrate on a paper towel for 15 minutes - this is important because it reduces the water content of the egg plant and also removes some of the bitter flavor. Next, I brushed the eggplant lightly with honey and sauteed them in olive oil that had slices of garlic. This imparted a nice sweet and garlicky flavor to the eggplant and was healthy!

Inspired by the cheapness of eggplants at the market, I decided to try my hand at miso eggplant from this recipe. Everything was fine, except the following changes:

• 2 cups of miso mix for 4 eggplants? No way. I didn’t know what to do with 2 whole cups of the miso mix and decided to distribute it evenly over the eggplants. WAY TOO SALTY. Ended up scraping off the excess miso and eating the eggplant with a touch of the miso. I would suggest half the miso mix or double the eggplants next time.
• Pan seared the eggplants in a sautee pan first, instead of broiling them pre-miso basting.

I’d make this again, maybe even with different vegetables like zucchini.