My hair is wild, my coat smells of onions, and my stomach is churning. I have been on a three-day bender that began with a can of Wolf Gang Puck corn chowder and has finally ended with way too much Grimaldi’s pizza. I am suffering from a food hangover.
The shame and physical discomfort are similar to a regular hangover but rather than occurring after a single night of bad judgment, the food hangover is a result of several days of culinary overindulgence. Think of that last college friend reunion that turned into a string of brunches, dinners, coffees, cocktails and ice cream cones and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
It would be easy to blame my state on my friend Dawn’s White Trash party. I alone was responsible for the presence of taquitos. I also roasted S’mores over dollar store candles using take out chop sticks. If anyone thought I was crazy, they didn’t say word.
What was crazy were the Vienna sausages wrapped in canned crescent rolls. I never imagined people would flock to pastry wrapped canned meat with such vigor.
Two bubbling crock pots housed meatballs basted in grape jelly and chili sauce. And Dawn couldn’t refill the frozen fish sticks with shelf stabilized tartar sauce fast enough. So yeah, I’d like to blame the party, but I’ve been eating giant burgers, omelets, chocolates and chips like it’s going out of style for days. I blame the weather.
So no there will be no recipe with cute photos this week because seltzer water and dry salad do not photograph well.
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Friday's Fried Rice
The one rule that trumps all other rules when making fried rice is “You gotta keep ‘um separated.”
I first attempted homemade fried rice while living in Japan and it was a nasty experiance. There was a rice surplus after school lunch so a few of us teachers took home the leftovers.
A few hours later I was standing in my matchbook of a kitchen hacking away at a corn studded, gluttonous mass, of rice. Each prod with a spatula sent it skidding around the frying pan. It wasn’t breaking down and it wasn’t melding with the broccoli spears and carrot rounds I had included. It was a hot mess and adding soy sauce did nothing but change the color.
That night I had an asparagus, bacon, potato pizza delivered.
Since then I’ve worked on my technique. Most importantly each component must be fried separately and combined at the end. This recipe it great for an end of the week fridge clean out because you can use almost anything. Just be sure you begin with that three-day-old rice because it works best. You also have to use small bits of vegetables and meat if you want that molded Chinese restaurant look.
Now go and turn that crusty old rice into something worth fighting for at the dinner table.
Vegetable Fried Rice
3 tbs vegetable oil
¾ tbs sesame oil
½ small onion (about ½ cup chopped)
1 cup frozen vegetable medley
2 ½ tsp fresh ginger (minced)
2 ½ tsp garlic (minced)
1 egg
2 cups (cold, cooked rice)
1/3 cup soy sauce
salt
1 ½ tbs honey (optional)
¾ tbs sesame oil
½ small onion (about ½ cup chopped)
1 cup frozen vegetable medley
2 ½ tsp fresh ginger (minced)
2 ½ tsp garlic (minced)
1 egg
2 cups (cold, cooked rice)
1/3 cup soy sauce
salt
1 ½ tbs honey (optional)
Before you begin be sure to have all ingredients prepped. This a quick cooking process.
Put half of the vegetable oil in a cold frying pan. Place the pan over medium/high heat adding the chopped onion. Cook onion until lightly browned (about 4 minutes).
Add frozen vegetables and ginger then sprinkle with salt. Add garlic. Cook veggies until warm and tender (3-4 minutes). Remove veggies from the pan and set aside.
Crack egg into the hot pan and scramble. Put aside with vegetables. 
Add remaining vegetable oil and sesame oil to the hot pan. The pan should sizzle when splashed with water. Add rice, using your hands to break up any large chunks. Stir fry rice for about 4 minutes.
Return egg and vegetables to the pan adding soy sauce and blending well.
From this point you’re on your own. You’ve eaten fried rice one hundred times. Taste what you have and adjust by adding more oil, soy sauce... I like to put honey in mine for a bit of sweet.
Roasted Tomato and Garlic Sauce- The Wrong Way
I toyed with the idea of lying to you all. I was going to get up here and tell you that the bowl of food featured above was Amazing, in effect perpetuating the lie I started telling myself a few days ago.
Softball sized tomatoes have a way of speaking to a cook. Like a freak challenge staring me in the face these vegetable-stand sirens beckoned; and I fell for it.
Roasting automatically came to mind.
They looked right -prepped with olive oil, salt and pepper. A whole garlic head completed the mix and I was totally optimistic.
Shriveled, shrunken and browned in places, my tomato project looked like a success . They cooled for an hour and I began to peel away the skin licking oil from my fingers. Infused with salt and garlic juice it was warm and fragrant. And the tomatoes smelled sweet. I was in the home stretch. All I had to do was blend it up and season to taste.
The first indication that things weren’t so fabulous was the post-blend salmon pink color. I offered Zack a taste and he responded, “I don’t like cream sauce.”
“Cream! There’s no cream in this.”
But dairy wasn’t a bad idea. If anything was going to save this pale tasteless goop, it was going to be parmesan and fresh basil.
Blended all together with al dente pennette, it looked pretty, but still tasted blah.
So here’s the big lesson: good food begins with good ingredients and no amount of culinary strong arming can make up for poor product. But that doesn’t mean you should give up tomato roasting altogether. If your neighbor just slipped a shopping bag of garden tomatoes around the handle of your front door, go ahead and preheat the oven. The rest of us need to take a look at the canned veggie section.
Click here for the original roasted tomato sauce recipe on RecipeZaar.
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