eating glue

For some reason I’ve never managed to make decent good edible fried rice straight from fresh rice. I mean, cook the rice then fry it. Never. I’ve been trying since my university days, and the best I’ve ever managed has been reasonably tasty glue.

I can make decent (if a little weird, thanks to my cooking style) fried rice from day-old cooked rice easily enough. Actually, for many a long year I was fully convinced that rice had to sit for at least 24 hours to “dry out” before it could be fried. But somehow lzh can make perfect fried rice from rice that has only just finished boiling. I can’t figure out how she does it.

I mean, first of all, the best I ever manage is to cook decent fried rice from cooked rice that’s had a day to dry out, and yet she makes perfect fried rice from rice that’s only just been cooked. Secondly, doesn’t matter how recently the rice has been cooked, or whether it’s sat for a day (or even two or three in the winter when it lasts longer), she always cooks it perfect, whereas the best I can manage is decent. But that second point tells you why she does most of the cooking.

And what brought this on? lzh’s danwei is running a conference over the next few days, and so this evening she had to pick up some Korean guy from the airport and show him to his hotel, and so she’ll be home rather late, and so I had to cook for myself, but there’s bugger all in the fridge. Two eggs, and that’s about it. And so, dutifully following my wife’s instructions, I boiled up some rice to fry. There were also some onions and garlic in the kitchen, along with the odd, random assortment of Chinese and Western sauces and spices, so I managed to get some reasonable, if somewhat unconventional, flavour into the fried rice. But, as always when I cook the rice less than 24 hours before I fry it, I wound up with a wok full of flavourful glue.

Oh well, it filled my belly, and that’s the main thing.