Kimchi Fried Rice

It's been a while since I've felt like cooking something new.

We've come back to Ningbo for about a month now and in that time, I've cooked almost daily but nothing new. Just simple dishes and stir fries. We try to minimize eating out because it is quite difficult to enjoy our food and have to entertain Micah.

When we do eat out, I take some pictures but end up not being able to blog about it because of the Great Firewall. I've got a VPN service now - blogging has revived and so has cooking.

I've had kimchi in my fridge since our visit to the Korean restaurant. As much as I like it, I didn't find myself eating it often and looking at what's left, I doubt I'm going to finish it this year! And I've been wanting to try my hand at fried rice. Why not Kimchi Fried Rice.

It is no secret that to cook great fried rice, you should use overnight rice. The grains are less moist and remain nice and fluffy after frying. I cooked extra rice yesterday so that I could fry some today.

But sadly my rice was still soggy - just like all my previous attempts at fried rice. I figured that the heat for the wok is not hot enough. I was doing fine until I added beated eggs. I even had this method of frying up portions of rice so that I could make it fry evenly but it didn't matter because when I added the eggs, it didn't cook quick enough, instead got absorbed by the rice. Now I can't even tell that there are eggs in the rice!

I think I'd better fry the eggs separately next time and add it in. Or have more patience to wait for the eggs to set a bit in a well I made in the wok of rice before mixing it all up. Sigh!

Anyways the recipe is simple - garlic, onions (diced), fry until fragrant, add meat (I chose chicken), add kimchi cabbage which were chopped up together with the juice and finally, eggs. The method varies from one recipe to another but I think you get the picture.

I don't think David was impressed - it wasn't even spicy because Micah had a few mouthfuls of the rice :)