I love, love, LOVE Chinese food. I love the fire of authentic Hunanese food, the tongue numbing, citrusy sichuan pepper and chile burn of Sichuanese cuisine, and the delicate flavors of Cantonese. I also love Americanized Chinese food. I get no end of shit about this from the Chinese women in my life.
Something you should know about me – I am a lesbian magnet. I love the ladies who love the ladies, and they love me. The other demographic with whom I am blessed/cursed is Chinese women. Strong, bossy, opinionated Chinese women abound in my life, and ALL. OF. THEM take great pleasure in offering me feedback about…well…everything. They ESPECIALLY delight in critiques of my cooking and takeout choices. Additionally, they do not in any way condone my love of Americanized Chinese food. Authentic Kung Pao rocks. So does the General (Tso). A perfect daikon radish cake with slivers of chinese ham is a thing of beauty. So is a big assed hunk of Almond Fried Chicken. They mock me and my pedestrian tastes/cravings for this food I grew up eating. If I try to mix Asian ingredients with non-asian ingredients, the mockery increases. Can you feel my pain?
This recipe is fried rice we had for breakfast over the weekend. It follows some basic rules:
- Everything is better fried.
- Everything fried is better when fried in duck fat.
- Everything is better when covered with a fried duck egg.
For those of you who love fried rice and love mixing great ingredients regardless of their point of origin, you will like this dish. The chile jam adds heat, the chinese sausage adds sweetness, there’s a peppery bite from the wild arugula, and duck fat brings it together. Oh, and hello—it has a fried duck egg on top so it’s a perfectly acceptable breakfast dish.
For the rest of you (and you KNOW who you are, Lorna)---suck it. This rice was awesome. Chile Jam recipe to follow. It’s worthy of its own blog post.
Chile and Crab Fried Rice
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp oyster-flavored sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
2 Tbsp duck fat + 1 Tbsp duck fat
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp minced garlic
2 shallots, minced
3 sweet chinese sausage links (available in most Asian markets)
½ lb fresh crab meat
1 cup arugula
¼ cup garlic chives, cut on a bias
2 cups cold cooked long-grained rice, grains separated
2 duck eggs
- Mix soy sauce, oyster sauce and sesame oil together in a bowl.
- Heat a wok over high heat until hot. Add duck fat and swirl to coat the sides (add more if necessary). Add the ginger, shallot and garlic and stir-fry until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the chinese sausage and stir-fry until warmed through, about 3 minutes.
- Push the meat and aromatics to the side of the wok and add the rice, stir-frying until the mixture is combined and the rice is heated through, about 3 minutes.
- Pour in the sauce, arugula and garlic chives and toss to coat evenly. Fold in crab. Mound into two individual bowls.
- Fry duck eggs in the final Tbsp of duck fat in a separate frying pan and serve over rice. Serve with chile jam or sriracha, as you like.