I’m not completely happy with my chopped liver recipe and how it turned out. It’s in the freezer for when I’ll get a chance to go see my grandmother and get her to help me fix it. In the meantime, I still need things to eat, so this afternoon, I broke out my old stand by: fried rice.
It’s nothing too complicated. I open up the refrigerator, and when I see a container of leftover rice from a previous meal, I know that my lunch will be fried rice. The next task is to search through the fridge and pick what else will go in it.
I always have garlic around, so two or three cloves of that get chopped up. There’s usually onion hanging out in a drawer somewhere (this week, I happened to still have some organic spring onions, a gift from my mother!). Of course soy sauce, which we use in so many things and therefore buy by the gallon. And then an egg for added protein. Beyond that, I just toss in whatever happens to be lying around.
Basic Ingredients:
Leftover Rice (about 1 ½ c.)
2 cloves garlic
1 spring onion or ¼ small onion
olive oil
soy sauce
1 egg
Today, I started with the onion and garlic. Chopped up and tossed into the skillet of hot oil. Saute those for a moment or two, then toss in the rice and carefully stir. After it’s been allowed to warm up a little, I drizzle it with the soy sauce. Today, I still had leftovers of the homemade teriyaki sauce we like to keep around, so I used that instead. Later, when it seemed like it needed more sauce, I added plain soy sauce. I tossed in a little Frank’s wing sauce for some kick, added the cooked egg whites (leftover from making lemon bars last week), and stirred some more. It was still lacking something, so I added some miso paste (yeah, I know, these are not the sort of things most Americans keep lying around in their kitchen—use what you’ve got). Stir it around and throw in some more soy sauce, and then turn off the heat. In less than five minutes, lunch is ready and quite tasty. There was enough for lunch and plenty for leftovers.
Dinner tonight (pictured above) involved cooking up a chicken breast, slicing it once cooked, and tossing that in with some of the rest. It was supposed to be just sliced when cooked, but I discovered when slicing it that I’d managed to cook it about medium-rare, which for steak is acceptable, chicken not so much. Back into the still-hot pan it went to saute for a moment more, and then all done. The chicken, by the way, is pre-packaged, boneless skinless breasts, premarinated in teriyaki. Normally, I wouldn’t do this, but I got to the store on the same day as their sell by/freeze by date, which meant the store had put a 50% off coupon on the package, making them cheaper than the ones with bones and skin.
Total cost: less than a dollar for two meals, with leftovers for tomorrow’s breakfast or lunch.