Chinese Entree
SHRIMP FRIED RICE
INGREDIENTS
1 cup rice
2 medium carrots
1″ ginger root
2 stalks green onions
2 eggs
½ tablespoon sesame oil (1 more tablespoon later)
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons canola oil or olive oil
¾ pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
½ cup snow peas or snap peas
SPECIAL UTENSILS
food processor or grater
spice grinder
wok or skillet
Serves 4. Takes 35 minutes
PREPARATION
Cook rice according to directions on package. Grate carrot using food processor or grater. Grind ginger root in spice grinder. Dice green onions.
Add eggs to small mixing bowl. Whisk eggs. Add 1 tablespoon sesame oil to wok. Heat oil with medium-high heat until a tiny bit of egg dances in the oil. Add eggs. Sauté egg for 1 minute. (Do not stir.) Flip egg over with spatula. Add egg to flat surface. Cut egg into ¼” wide strips.
Add 1 tablespoon sesame oil, soy sauce, pepper, and salt to mixing bowl. Blend with whisk or fork. Add canola oil to wok. Heat on medium-high heat until tiny bit of ginger dances in the oil. Add shrimp. Sauté shrimp for 2 minutes or until shrimp turns pinkish orange. Stir and flip shrimp occasionally. Remove shrimp and set aside. Keep canola oil. Add ginger, carrot, and snow peas to wok. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until carrot and snow peas soften. Stir frequently.
Add egg strips, rice, green onion, sesame oil/soy sauce mixture to wok. Sauté on medium heat for 3 minutes. Stir frequently. Add shrimp. Stir. Serve in bowls immediately.
TIDBITS
1) The children’s game, CandylandTM, was invented way back when in prehistoric times by Philippe and Miriam Davout. The Davouts were devoted parents and persistent entrepreneurs. Hence, the saying that’s been passed down through the millennia, “As loving as a Davout hug. As novel as Davout fire.” Another stone-age adage that we know is, “As ugh as Ogg’s mastodon mignon.” But Chef Ogg deserves his own tidbit series after a recipe and so we return to the Davouts.
2) Anyway, little Yvette Davout didn’t have much to do. She had no school to go to. And what would the teacher have taught her? “Stay inside your cave. The pumas lurking outside will eat you.” That’s it. Her parents taught her. No need for school.
3) This attitude persists to this day. However, the truth be told, not many people nowadays do not get eaten, or even seriously challenged, by pumas. So, this view is kinda hard to challenge.
4) Meanwhile back at the cave, Yvette fussed and fussed. She couldn’t go out to see the Murat sisters. And after, their daughter Lucy got eaten by pumas, Daddy and Mommy Murat wouldn’t let their remaining girls visit Yvette anymore.
5) It got hot during Olduvai Gorge summers, particularly in a cave. Sweat rolled down Yvette’s sloped forehead like Eddie the Eagle doing a ski jump. She needed a distraction before she went stir crazy and ran outside to eaten by pumas.
6) Then one glorious noon, a thought, the first of the day, popped into Miriam’s head. She explained it to Philippe. He smiled. “Yo ho, Miram, that a’s glorious idea, wife.” They chattered excitedly about rules, then stopped abruptly. Miriam slapped her head with a rock. It didn’t hurt, her skull was thick. Cave folk did this all the time.
7) Miriam, having waited for the author’s intrusion to stop said, “Boo hoo, we don’t have the requisite technology to fabricate the many colors needed to paint this game’s playing cards.”
8) That was quite a complex statement for the time. Philippe, having neither a dictionary nor even a ThesaurusTM, had to guess at its meaning. Then he too smashed something to his head. It was a large chunk of obsidian. It splintered into nice sharp dice-like cubes.
9) The Davouts looked at each other. Light bulbs, at once a metaphor and an artifact, lit up above their heads. “Let’s make dice–the first use of this word–out of these, these DICE,” said Philippe and they did. They finished the game lickety split.
10) Little Yvette loved the game. She played it and played it until the sharp edges of the obsidian dice sliced off too many of her fingers. Distraught and bored, she took up painting. It was tough painting with two fingers on her hand, hence the crudely shaped hunters and mastodons we see depicted in the Lascaux caves.
11) Yvette eventually gave her dice to her own daughter, Sabine. Sabine too was forbidden to go outside the cave or to play bloody Candyland. She took to cooking instead. Being smart like all dawn-of-humanity Davouts, Sabine took to chopping onions with her Candyland dice. She called this technique dicing and so do we. There you go.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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