more ballyhoo

Here's another recipe that got a lot of squawk in the food blogs a while ago. Everybody was all ooooh, you gotta make this fried rice, this is the best fried rice. It is good fried rice, but it didn't blow me away or anything. I'll probably make it again even, but not for breakfast. I'm just too damn hungry to fiddle around with it first thing in the morning.

  

The original recipe is here. It says to fry the ginger & garlic in the oil first, then fry the rice with the same oil. That probably makes a difference. There's onions in it too, but I didn't have onions. Oops, oh well. So I put in edamame for color which is actually pretty good. And soy sauce doesn't really amaze me or anything, so I used a dab of black bean sauce, which really helps.

1 cup cold rice
1 small clove garlic, minced
1 small slice ginger, minced
edamame - I used pre-cooked frozen, thawed out first.
1 egg
sesame oil and other oil for frying
salt
black bean sauce

Put about a tablespoon of cooking oil in a pan on medium high heat. When the oil is hot, dump in the rice and a pinch of salt and stir it around to break up the clumps and coat the rice with a little oil. Cover the pan and wait for there to be some brown bits on the rice. Stir it up, push it to the side of the skillet and add about another teaspoon of cooking oil plus a dash of sesame for flavor. Add the ginger & garlic bits and another pinch of salt, then fry until they're crispy.  Throw in the edamame and a little black bean sauce, stir everything up, and dump it onto a plate so you can fry an egg to go on top. Don't over fry the egg or you won't be able to stir the yolk into the rice.

What do I think? It's fried rice for chrissakes! Of course it tastes good, it's po' folks food! I guess I just feel like it was another case of the fancy chef guy who has the tv spot or whatever being able to say 'Hey look! I can make normal food too!' and everybody else going 'No way man! That's amazing! You did that on tv!'

Like I said, I'll probably make this the next time the fridge is empty, but I feel rather impatient with the fuss about it. I kinda thought well duh, you put fried garlic and eggs on anything mostly, and it'll taste pretty darn good.

Much Ballyhoo

I tried this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. It looked too simple to live up to the hype, and I think it is. Tomato, onion, butter. Well, that's a good start, and I will definitely use it for assorted other things, maybe with some mushrooms, or a little sausage added. Or some fresh herbs. Maybe a clove of garlic, because garlic and tomatoes were born for each other. Maybe next time I will mince the onion and caramelize it in the butter first, then cook in the tomatoes, something.

Now, there is nothing wrong with this recipe. It's just a little meh. I read the recipe and the commentary led me to expect a ravishing experience. I expected to swoon, and did not. It's true, I can think of several reasons why this sauce might not have lived up to expectation. I used the cheapest tomatoes in the store, for one, and some canned tomatoes are actually better than others. My onion was a little old, for another. I will try this recipe again, because beyond the fact that I just want to be sure that it really is the recipe, and not me, which is at fault, the sauce does have a very nice texture.

For the record, here's what I did:

1 28-oz can of Fred Meyer crushed tomatoes
2 small yellow onions
5 tablespoons salted butter

Since the original instructions say to use whole tomatoes and cook them down, rather than using crushed, I added about half a can of water to the tomatoes. The idea was to increase the water content to counteract the tendency of crushed tomatoes to start out nearly as thick as you want them to end up. More water = more cooking time. More cooking time = more flavor. Anyway, I put the tomatoes, the butter, and the peeled, halved onions in a sauce pot and simmered them for an hour or so, until the sauce had reduced to an appealing consistency. It is what it is.

Maybe I should have put in a bit more salt? Maybe I need better tomatoes? Garlic? Who knows.