and things went downhill from there

I was tossing about lunch ideas this morning when it struck me that we still had some chicken kubasa in the fridge that needed to be used. I pondered over a few uses for it and settled on fried rice. This would also give me an opportunity to use up the rest of my dried porcini mushrooms.

I started by measuring a third of a cup of basmati rice into one of our smallest pots and setting it aside to soak in cold water. While that did its thing, I dropped the last handful of dried mushrooms into a measuring cup along with about two-thirds of a cup of water, and a tablespoon or two of mirin. I nuked it for 45 seconds and then set it aside to reconstitute.

About ninety minutes later, I drained the rice and rinsed it a couple of times until the water I poured off was mostly clear, then I strained the mushroom water into the rice and stirred in a little bit of chicken bullion. Then I cooked it in the usual manner. When the rice was done, I uncovered it and let it sit while I worked on the next steps.

I peeled and cubed the last of the kubasa and tossed that into a frying pan with a bit of oil (I wouldn't have bothered with the oil if this had been the pork kubasa, but the chicken one has very little fat). Once the sausage had a headstart, I chopped up the mushrooms and scraped those into the pan to free up the cutting board.

I let those cook for a bit while I chopped up a stalk of celery and the white end of a scallion, adding those when they were ready. I let them fry a time with the sausage while I minced up two cloves of garlic (probably not needed in retrospect given that the sausage has a lot of garlic in it), and an inch or so of ginger.

I stirred those into the pan and then whisked up an egg with some soy sauce mirin. When the garlic and ginger were nice and fragrant, I dumped in a small handful of frozen peas and stirred them around until they thawed. Next, I cleared the centre of the pan and stirred in the egg, cutting and scraping it with a spatula until it was soft-scrambled. I stirred the egg in with the other ingredients and then added the onion greens.

Finally, I splashed in a tiny bit more oil and scraped the cooked rice into the pot along with a good splash each of sesame oil, soy sauce and oyster sauce. From there I just stirred and tossed it (gently, so as not to damage the rice) until it was heated through. I topped it with black sesame seeds when it was done.

Mixing Polish sausage with a more Chinese-style fried rice may sound like an odd fusion, but it worked very well. The fact that garlic was an intrinsic part of this rice anyway worked in its favour. It was a good use of both the sausage and the mushrooms.

Also, the mushroom flavour REALLY came through in this - using the water I soaked them in to make the rice paid off. The rice would have been fine on its own as a dish without being fried and mixed with other things. Definitely worth a repeat if I find myself with leftover kubasa in the future.

Oh, hey, here's another post about food - though that should come as a surprise to nobody. My physique makes it fairly clear that I like to eat.

There was a short-lived restaurant in our town that specialized in a slightly healthier fare, usually locally-sourced. One of their breakfast dishes was a simple concoction of a fried egg served over quinoa and brown rice (or some combination like that). I liked it. We dined out for breakfast yesterday, and as we tossed around ideas for where we would go, I found myself lamenting the loss of this elegant, but simple dish as a breakfast option.

I mulled over it when we were shopping, and I decided to try making my own variant on it for breakfast this morning. I grabbed a couple of things that I would need and tossed around ideas for a recipe. Rather than quinoa, I decided that I would just go with brown rice. That was the plan, but when we scoured our supplies this morning we discovered that we were down to our last few grains of brown rice. Half the fun of cooking is improvising, so I made do.

I wanted to make a full cup of rice, but we had less than 1/2 cup of brown, so I supplemented that with some basmati rice, and added a half cup of wild rice to the mix. While that cooked down in some vegetable bouillon, I diced half of a Walla Walla onion and slowly sauteed it in olive oil. When the onions were nearly done, I wilted a couple handfuls of spinach with them and set the mixture aside.

I wiped down the pan, drizzled in a bit more olive oil and cracked in four eggs, which I cooked covered over low heat. When the eggs were nearly done, I garnished them with a pinch of sweet paprika. I tossed the rice and spinach together and split it between two bowls, topped them with a pair of eggs, and finished it with some fresh-chopped chives from my herb garden.

The yolks were slightly more solid than I'd have liked, but we were both quite pleased with the results.