Well, I had a lot of rice left in the fridge the other day so I decided to cook some fried rice and for a change, I decided not to use ikan bilis (dried anchovies) or cincaluk (fermented shrimps) or stuff as such like what I would usually do and fry it Chinese-style…
I still have a packet of Chinese sausages (lap cheong) in the fridge – I think that must be from Annie-Q and I can’t for the dear life of me remember when she gave me those. Then, there was also the packet of bak kua (barbecued pork slices) that I got from Yi Ling and I decided to use that in the end. I cut two pieces into little tiny bits and at the same time, I peeled and sliced one shallot and three cloves of garlic and I cut a few of those little chilies for use as well…
I heated a bit of oil in the wok and threw in the sliced ingredients…
…and fried them in the hot oil till they turned golden brown before I added the bak kua…
Remember not to use too much oil as some oil will come out of the bak kua as you fry it and your fried rice may end up a bit too oily for your liking.
After that, I added the rice and mixed it thoroughly with the ingredients. I added a dash of dark soy sauce – just a bit to give it a shade of colour and added a bit of salt, msg and pepper and then, pushing the rice aside, I broke the egg into the wok…
I saw Kylie cooking fried rice on tv and she beat the eggs and poured them onto the rice and mixed them altogether. I did not want to do it like that as I wanted some bits of cooked egg in my fried rice…and when I pushed the rice over the uncooked part of the egg, it would be coated by it and this would add a special flavour to the fried rice. I noticed that there was too much rice so in the end, I used two eggs.
Finally, I dumped in the chopped spring onions and Chinese celery that were left over from the steamboat dinner that we had sometime ago. After stirring continuously for a bit, I dished everything out and served it….
It was very nice, take my word for it.
A day or two later, I decided to cook the leftover tang hoon (glass noodles) from our steamboat dinner and instead of the bak kua, I used some minced meat, also left over from the meat balls I made for the dinner…and I found a bit of crab meat in the freezer so I decided to use that instead of prawns.
I cooked it the same way more or less and this was the end result…
It was all right, I would say – not really great as I had forgotten to add the chilies so somehow, I felt that it lacked the oomph that I would need to enjoy it more. Anyway, we still had the chili dip that my missus made for the same steamboat dinner so we had the fried tang hoon with that and it turned out to be not too bad in the end.
P.S.:
Please excuse the condition of my wok. Actually, I have two new woks in the house, one Tefal no less…but I still prefer this one (also Tefal) that I bought when we moved into our present house in the middle of 1988. Sometimes, the old ones are better, don’t you think so? Wink! Wink! LOL!!!