Smitten with Poppy Seed Lemon Cake

I had eight egg yolks leftover from a previous recipe and I was originally going to make Momofuku’s crack pie (because the Pie had requested the same).  But then I realized that the recipe makes TWO pies, and I don’t really like the dish itself — it’s just too sweet for me. No way can I work through one of those pies, let alone two.  So I decided to make Smitten Kitchen’s Poppy Seed Lemon Cake instead.  Not to be mistaken for lemon poppy seed cake, this crumbly confection has a mere hint of citrus and a heckuva lot of crunchy seeds.

So if you want to go this route, get to it!  Preheat your oven to 325°F and then generously butter and flour a 8″ fluted Bundt or tube pan.

Go ahead and butter the dull side of a 10″ piece of tin foil while you’re at it (helpful hint for North American readers, at least: foil comes in 12″ wide rolls, so if you tear off a near-perfect square you should be all right).

Melt 2 sticks unsalted butter (1 cup, or 1/2lb) and set that aside to cool a bit.

Scrub 2 large lemons and grate the zest from them.

Now, in the bowl of your electric mixer, plop 1 whole egg, 8 egg yolks, and 2/3 cup granulated sugar.

Beat that up on medium-high speed for about 8 minutes (I’m not even joking).  Watch how the mixture transforms to this pale and fluffy amazingness.  Beat in the lemon zest.

Sift on top of that 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup corn starch, and a pinch of salt.

Use a rubber spatula to fold that in.  The corn starch will make the spatula catch against the edges of the bowl but you must persist.

Put the mixer on medium speed and trickle in the butter.

And then add in 1/2 cup poppy seeds.  I know, it’s a lot of poppy seeds.  Don’t worry, it’s not going to get you high.

Pour that into your prepared pan.

Use the buttered tin foil to tightly seal the top of the pan (this keeps the cake from drying out and allows its own steam to make it a little fluffier).

Bake that sucker for 45 minutes, until the cake begins to pull away from the sides of the pan and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.  Take the foil off and let the pan cool on a wire rack for about 15 minutes.

Then invert the pan and let the cake fall out.  If you buttered the pan enough this won’t be a problem, but if it sticks, use a butter knife to gently pry it away from the sides of the pan.

Let the cake cool for at least 30 minutes before serving (or it will fall apart on you).  Dust the top with icing sugar as decoration.

Now, I didn’t feel right wasting the juice of those 2 lemons, so I heated up the juice, together with about 3 tablespoons of sugar, to make a wee glaze to go on top, to boost the lemony-ness of the cake, for those who were interested.

Cheesy Bacon Scone-Off

Om nom nom nom.

That’s all I can really say about this recipe from The English Kitchen.  And this one from my pal Caroline at The Wanna Be Country Girl.  But which one to make?

Oh come on.  You knew I was going to do something ridiculous like that.  It’s in the title for Pete’s sake.  And any excuse to make these beauties twice is a good one.

So here we go.

Bacon, Cheddar and Rosemary Scones from The Wanna Be Country Girl:

First, fry up about 6 slices of bacon.  I discovered at the last second that my bacon was still frozen, so I did something genius.  While I was doing the dishes I popped the sealed package in the sink and when I was finished with washing up the bacon was ready to go.

Because I was so pleased with myself I made it a round 7 slices.  You’ll want to fry this up extra crispy.  Set it aside to drain and cool, then break into a million little pieces.

Preheat your oven to 400°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, sift together 2 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, a pinch of salt (if you’re using salted butter leave this out), and 1 tablespoon sugar (I actually forgot the sugar, and I don’t think it made much difference).  If you don’t have a hand sifter, you can shake your flour through a fine sieve instead.

Cut 6 tablespoons butter into small cubes (it’s like halfway between 1/3 and 1/2 cup butter) and plop that into the flour mixture.

Use a pastry cutter or your hands to incorporate the butter into the flour, so in the end all you get is crumbs.

Find yourself some fresh rosemary.

Take about three sprigs of that and chop it up so you end up with about 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh chopped rosemary.  Add that to the flour mix.

Find yourself some sharp cheddar.  If you have access to a Costco or you live in Ontario, make it a lovely Balderson aged cheddar.  It makes everything better.

Gren knows exactly what the cheese grater looks like, where it’s stored, and what it does.  Unfortunately, I am not as liberal with my cheese droppings as the Pie is so he was disappointed today.  Grate up about 1 cup sharp cheddar and add that to the flour mix.

Crumble up your bacon and add that to the flour mix.  Give the whole thing a good stir so everything is evenly distributed.

In another bowl, plop 2 eggs and 1/2 cup heavy cream (whipping cream, in Canada).  Stir that up.

Pour the liquid into the flour.  Stir it around as much as you can.

Eventually you will need your hands to make everything stick together into a ball. Knead that ball once or twice inside the bowl.

Dump the ball of dough onto a lightly floured surface and pat it down to a thickness of about 1 1/2″.  Use a cutter or a knife to divide it however you wish, and transfer it to the baking sheet.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, checking to make sure they’re not browning too much.

This one was pretty much fresh from the oven and the butter melted just looking at it.

See?

We may have eaten these for dinner one rainy night.  Don’t judge us.

Cheese and Bacon Scones from The English Kitchen:

Preheat your oven to 425°F.  Grab yourself a baking sheet.  

Fry up some bacon.  The recipe calls for 4oz of bacon (who weighs bacon?  The British, naturally), but in the interest of fairness I just used the same amount as I did in the last batch, which was 7 slices bacon.  Go for extra crispy, then let it cool and break it up into wee bits.

Sift together 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon cayenne, and 1 teaspoon salt into a large bowl.  I love my sifter, but a simple sieve is easier on the hands and a mite quicker. If you think your cayenne might be extra fresh, I would recommend using slightly less than a teaspoon — that stuff can build on you.

Use a pastry cutter, and then probably your hands, to work 2 tablespoons cold cubed butter into the mix, until you have a crumb-y consistency.  Same as the last one.

Grate up 1 cup sharp cheddar (again, go Balderson or go home).

Add that to the flour mixture, along with the broken bacon.

Whisk together 1 egg and 1 2/3 cups buttermilk.  You can sour milk with lemon juice, or vinegar but it’s not quite the same.

Make an extinct volcano with your dry ingredients (dig a crater, yo) and pour the wet stuff into the hole.

Mix this into a soft dough with your hands while trying the whole time not to knead it.  Apparently in this recipe kneading is a no-no. Dump your doughy mass onto a floured surface and pat the sticky stuff down with your hands until you get a little square patty about 3/4″ thick.

Then you cut it into about 15-20 pieces. I decided, for science, to do mine the same way I did with the previous recipe, to get a better idea of how each one cooks.  Sliced into thick wedges, yis b’y.

Plop those onto your baking sheet and pop them into your oven for 10-14 minutes, or until they’re risen and a nice golden brown. Just remember that this time is for the smaller square scones. If you make them big fat wedges you’re going to need to bake them for about 20-25 minutes.

This recipe says to let them cool on a wire rack, but I’m not sure I can wait that long.  Where’s my butter?

AND THE WINNER IS

Okay well there is no winner.  They’re both amazing.  I loved the fluffiness and slow heat of the English Kitchen version, and the flaky rosemary-ness of Wanna Be’s was amazing.

I mean, if I make these again I’ll probably combine my favourite elements of the two, and come up with my own version.  I always thought scones were hard, but these ladies have certainly corrected that assumption for me!

Scoff and a Half: Cod Fish Cakes, Rock-style

If you know anything about Newfoundland, you know that historically it has been home to one of the largest cod fisheries in the world.  So if you visit the Rock you can pretty much eat cod any which way you like.  Many here prefer to eat it salted (a traditional way to preserve it), and there’s a huge number of dishes surrounding this particular delicacy.  A favourite locally is fish ‘n’ brewis (pronounced like “bruise”), and is very popular amongst the hungover patrons of George Street.  It’s a breaded filet of salt cod, pan fried and topped with scruncheons, which you may remember from our toutons recipe.  It makes for a good “scoff,” or meal.

You can get salt cod pretty much anywhere on the eastern coast of Canada and through much of New England.  It’s a pretty popular way of preserving fish, so you’re likely to find it as well in markets in Russia, China, huge chunks of Europe, and more or less wherever else cod is sold.  You can also get canned salted cod from specialty shops and online.  If you can’t get salt cod (or you can’t be bothered to get some) you can use fresh cod or haddock or any other white fish as a substitute.  Just don’t go through the soaking step, and add a bit of salt to the recipe.

First you need about 1lb salt fish bits.  I don’t even question what the bits are, though it’s not all cod.  Just trust me on this one.

Dump those bits in a pot. Okay so it doesn’t look that appetizing. Just wait for it.

Fill the pot with cold water.  Bung that pot in the fridge overnight.

Next day, drain that salty, salty water, and fill it again with fresh. Put the pot on the stove and bring the contents to a gentle simmer for about 10-15 minutes.

While that’s on the go, peel and chop up about 1lb white potatoes (this was 4 large ones).  Huck them in a pot and boil the crap out of them as well.

Drain the cooked fish.

Use two forks (or a potato masher) to break the fish up into fine little bits.

Drain the cooked potatoes and mash them as well.  Leave them aside to cool a bit.

Finely chop up a small onion (or half a large one) and drop it in a pan with 1/4 cup butter.

Cook on medium heat until soft. While I’ve got you moving, might as well do the hokey pokey.

Crack 1 large egg and beat it up and put it aside, together with 2 tablespoons savoury, and some salt and pepper.

Dump the onions in with the fish and give that a stir.

Same-same with the potatoes and herbs.

When the mixture has cooled enough that it won’t cook the egg on contact, dump that in as well and mix it in.

Use a spoon to scoop up a generous helping of the mixture and form it with your hands into a little patty.

Roll the finished patty in about 1/4 cup flour (I used buckwheat so I could give some to Fussellette) and set it aside.

This particular recipe made 16 fish cakes for me.

Now you can wrap them up in waxed paper and seal them in something airtight and chuck them in the fridge, or freeze them.

To cook, heat a couple glugs of vegetable oil in a pan and fry on medium high for 3-4 minutes each side.

Flip when you get some nice golden-brown crispies on the bottom.

Serve with fresh chives or parsley and a side of strong condiment, like dijon mustard, relish, or chutney.  Save a couple for the magical creation we will be having on Friday.  Stay tuned!

English Muffins: easier to make than you think

I have a recipe for real, old-fashioned English muffins in my Peter Reinhart.  And some day, I totally plan to make them the way he says to (because he’s a genius).  Until then, I’m too darned lazy.  But I found this version by the Foodess (also a genius) that seems to be more up my alley in terms of ability and time.  It’s nice to finally have a decent English muffin in the morning, full of all those wee holes designed simply to hold melted butter and honey.  The Newfoundland version of the English muffin is just … WRONG.  It’s more like a hamburger bun or something.  It’s not right.

Anyway.  Start with 1 1/2 cups milk, and plop that in a microwave-safe bowl or measuring cup, and microwave for 2 1/2 – 3 1/2 minutes, until the milk begins to simmer around the edges.

While that’s on the go, cube up 1/4 cup cold butter.  The coldness of the butter will help to cool your milk down.

Stir the butter into the milk and swirl it around until it’s all melted.  Leave the milk aside for a bit to cool down.

Beat up 1 large egg and add to it 1/4 cup plain yogurt (I used Balkan style).

When the milk mixture has cooled to just warm, you can mix the egg/yogurt in.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, add 4 cups flour to 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons fine salt, and 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast.

Put that sucker on low (use a shield around the top if you’ve got one), and slowly pour in your dairy mixture.  Keep going until it’s all in there, and then beat (again, on low) for another full minute.

You can see that although the dough is still really sticky it’s starting to become stringy as well.  Gluten in action, folks.  SCIENCE.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula, cover the top with plastic wrap, and put it in a warm place for an hour to rise.

When it’s ready to go, lightly flour a clean work surface.  Find yourself a 3″ biscuit cutter or use the opening to a large drinking glass (mine was about 2 1/2″).

Scrape the dough out of the bowl onto the floured surface and sprinkle the top of it with flour as well.  Use your floured hands to pat the dough down until it’s about 1/2″ thick.

Using your cutter or glass, get busy cutting out little disks of dough.  Fold all your scraps together and repeat the process until you’ve used all your dough.  I ended up with 19 muffins in my batch.

Use a floured spatula to transfer them onto a baking sheet lined with parchment and set those somewhere warm to rise for another 20 minutes.

Now, preheat your oven to 400°F and plop a large cast iron skillet (or two) on your elements.  Heat those up to medium heat and dust them lightly with corn flour.  Do not use a non-stick pan for this; it will not work.  If you don’t have an iron skillet, use a steel, non-non-stick pan instead.

Plop some of your dough disks into the dusted, heated pan and let them cook on one side for about 3-4 minutes, or until the bottoms start to brown.

Flip them over and do it again to the other side.  Keep dusting the pan with more flour as needed, and keep in mind that the flour may start to smoke after a while.  As your pan heats up you will find it takes a shorter amount of time for your muffins to brown so keep an eye on them.

You can see how they are starting to rise up with the cooking and look more like real English muffins.  The reason you cook the tops and the bottoms is so that when the muffins are baking in the oven they don’t get all round and puffy like a dinner roll.

Transfer the browned muffins back to the parchment-lined baking sheets.

When you’re all ready to go and they’re all browned, pop them in the oven for 7-10 minutes, until the muffins sound hollow when you tap on them.

When you are ready to eat them, pierce the middle with a fork several times to break the muffin open.  If you cut them with a knife you won’t get the benefit of all the perfect little bubbles.

Look at those perfect little bubbles.

Then you can do whatever you’re going to do with them.  Toast them, use them as sandwich material (the Pie loves making his own version of the Egg McMuffin), eat them as a base for Eggs Benedict … whatever floats your boat.  They freeze well, too — just make sure to wrap them up really tightly.

Turnip Puff

There aren’t many vegetables that grow locally here in Newfoundland, and there are fewer still that you can easily obtain during the winter months.  One of the vegetables that you can get from a nearby source, however, is the turnip.  This is actually a rutabaga, but they call them turnips here so that’s what we’re gonna call it.  This was the smallest one I could find in the store, and it’s the size of my head (I don’t have a very large head, but I think a head-sized turnip is a pretty big turnip).

Normally we just boil them up and mash them (and then maybe bake them after that with some butter and sugar), but I’ve gotten kind of tired of that, so I searched online for a variation of that and found this nice little recipe.  You should give it a try, and give your lowly turnip/rutabaga a little boost.

Start with your turnip.  You’ll need about 3 cups peeled and cubed turnips for this recipe, but I just did my whole huge one, which I think ended up being about four cups.  Plop those in a big pot with enough water to cover.

Boil those up until they’re tender when you stab them with a fork, drain them, and then mash them with about a tablespoon of butter.  Mmm, butter … I don’t think I could live without butter.  It’s my favourite thing.  Set those aside to cool slightly.

While that’s cooling, preheat your oven to 375°F and spray a baking dish that will fit at least 3 cups turnip.  Mix together 5 teaspoons all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 2 teaspoons brown sugar, a dash of ground pepper and another dash of ground nutmeg.

Take an egg and crack it in a little bowl and beat it up.

Beat the egg into the slightly cooled turnip (that’s why you cool it, so it doesn’t cook the egg).

Then stir in your flour mixture as well.

Plop all that into your baking dish and smooth it out.  Melt about 2 tablespoons butter and mix it with 2 tablespoons bread crumbs and sprinkle that over top.

Bake uncovered for 30-35 minutes until the top starts to brown and is heated through.

Serve it up with anything you like.

We used some of our leftovers as a thickener for a chicken hash we made later that week and it was delicious.

Cheesecake Rolls, or something like that.

The Pie wanted to call these things “fruit puffs” but that didn’t seem right to me.  I’m still trying to come up with something catchy, as these things happened almost by accident.

While I was away in Ottawa with Gren, the Pie had purchased some strawberries on sale and they needed to be eaten.  As well, in retrieving something from the freezer, he’d pulled out some cream cheese and forgotten to put it back until it was already thawed, so we needed to eat that as well.  Cheesecake comes to mind, doesn’t it?  Or a strawberry cream cheese pie?  That is what the internet told me to do.  But I didn’t have anything on hand with which to make a crust.  I DID, however, have some puff pastry that was nearing its expiration date (you see how I don’t like to let things go to waste?)

So I made up this bad boy of a recipe, which has a strawberry and a banana variation.

Make sure your package of puff pastry has fully thawed and your cream cheese is room temperature.

Chop up about 1 cup to 1 1/2 cups fresh strawberries.  Sprinkle them with 2 tablespoons granulated sugar and add a dash of vodka, to bring the juices out.  Leave that to sit for a spell.

Slice up about 2 bananas.  Sprinkle those suckers with 2 tablespoons brown sugar, add a few pinches cinnamon, and a dash of dark rum, and leave it to marinate a bit.

In a smallish bowl, use a hand mixer to beat together 1 250g package plain cream cheese, 1 large egg, 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, and 1/3 cup granulated sugar.  Then repeat that whole process in another bowl.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and haul out a non-stick baking sheet.

On a floured surface, roll out both halves of 1 package puff pastry until they are the approximate diameter of a dinner plate.

Place one piece of pastry on one side of your baking sheet.  Take one of the bowls of cream cheese mixture and pour it carefully into the centre of the pastry.  You may need to hold up some of the sides if it’s runny.  Also, don’t feel pressured to use all the cream cheese or even all the fruit, if it doesn’t look like it’s going to fit.

Now plop your fruit on top of that.

Then exercise all sorts of magic physics and wrap that sucker up like a burrito.  Or something close to a burrito.  Or whatever sticks together.  I found that if you had one end that was longer than all the others if you folded it over the top everything kind of stayed in place.

For the most part.

Bake your cheesecake burritos for 35-45 minutes, until the pastry is puffy and golden and the filling has set.

Allow them to cool most of the way before cutting and eating them.

Store the leftovers wrapped in the fridge for a few days.  If there are any left!

Pioneer Potato Salad

We had a Valentine’s cold-plate potluck at work on Tuesday and I was assigned to make a potato-egg salad.  And as the best one out there belongs to the Pioneer Woman, that’s the one I made, with some modifications of course.  Ever since the grocery store down the block closed I have found myself without certain key ingredients at unfortunate times.  Today, it was green onions.  So I improvised.

Wash and cube about 5lbs potatoes.  I used two different kinds, for the colour.  You can peel them if you want, but I like the texture and flavour of potato skins so I left them in.  Plop those in a large pot and boil them until they’re tender and mashable.

You’re also going to want to hard boil 4 eggs, through whatever method you use.  When they’re ready, peel them up.  Mine were pretty recalcitrant and refused to be peeled in a civilized manner.  The shells would not come off without a fight.

I punished them through the vigor of my chopping (even if your eggs are well-behaved, you’ll still want to chop them up).

Finely chop as well half an onion (or 5 green onions).

And a handful of sweet pickles.  You can use dills, if you prefer, but I think it’s better with the sweet ones.

In a bowl, mix together about 1 1/2 cups mayonnaise and 4 tablespoons mustard (I used a stone-ground dijon here, but you can use what you like).

In a wee bowl, arrange about 1/2 teaspoon paprika and 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt.  I also added 2 tablespoons dried chives, for colour, as I was missing the green onions.

I also had another wee dish of dried dill, for garnish.

So here is my mis en place.

Mash your boiled potatoes.  I really like the colour combination of the white and yellow ones here.

Stir in your mayo/mustard mix.

Add in your eggs, onions, pickles, paprika, salt, and optional chives.  Make sure to scrape the bottom so you get everything mixed in evenly.

Plop it in a serving dish.  The best part about this potato salad is it’s good hot, warm, and cold.

Garnish with a sprinkle of paprika and some dill, or whatever floats your boat.  It’s not elegant, but it’s good!

Snow Day Dinner: Gluten-Free Linguini

Fussellette has recently discovered that she is a celiac and can no longer digest wheat gluten.  So now when we have her for dinner we have to take that into account, and can no longer offer the very dough-heavy meals that are traditional favourites for our Newfoundland friends.

Friday here in St. John’s was a snow day.  The whole city, including the court systems, the municipal and provincial governments, were shut down due to a sudden snow squall.  Fussellette decided to brave the winter weather, however, and made it to our house for dinner.  In honour of the weather, I decided on some form of comfort food, and in my mind that usually equals pasta.  For Fussellette, that means gluten-free pasta. This recipe makes enough for four servings.

Fortunately Sobeys has a large selection of gluten-free flours to choose from.  Just remember, however, when you’re baking with gluten-free flour, such as a rice flour, you still need a thickener, such as a starch, and a binding agent to replace the gluten.  Usually the binding agent is something called xanthan gum.

So to make this pasta, I had to do some mixing.

In a bowl, mix 1 1/3 cup brown rice flour, 2/3 cup arrowroot starch, 1 teaspoon xanthan gum, and 1 teaspoon fine sea salt.  Whisk that together thoroughly.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together 2 large eggs and 2 large egg yolks.  Save the whites for an omlette or meringue or something.  Add in 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons water and mix again until it’s fully combined.

Now comes the fun part.  You can simply pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredient bowl and stir, or you can do it on the counter in the old fashioned way.  Dump the dry stuff carefully out on your work surface.  Using a scraper, make a deep well in the centre.

Carefully pour in the egg mixture.

Using the scraper again, and your hands, start mixing the flour into the egg.  Work quickly, or your egg may form a river that will wind its way off your counter top.  The scraper, I found, is handy for cutting through the dough to make sure it mixes properly.

It should be cohesive but not tacky. Feel free to add more flour or water if you’re not getting the right consistency. Form the finished dough into a long cylinder and cut it into four sections.

Flatten those sections, wrap them tightly in plastic, and refrigerate them until you’re ready to make pasta.

You have a few options in how to make your pasta.  You could roll it out by hand and then cut it into long strips, but there is so much room for error in that, especially if you are working with a gluten-free pasta that barely sticks together on its own.

I opted to use a pasta maker.  This one here seems to be the standard one.  My parents own the same one so I know how to use it.  Most people who have a pasta maker own this one.  You can find them pretty cheap in second-hand stores.  I guess people get them as wedding presents and then never use them.  That’s where this one came from, and it had never been used before we busted it out.

So we used our awesome machine to thin out and cut our pasta into linguini.  We were originally going to go with spaghetti but we were concerned the pasta wouldn’t hold together all that well if it were smaller.  I recommend using two people to operate a pasta maker.  It may be awkward trying to figure out whose arms go where, but it’s handy to have one person operate the crank while the other feeds the dough through the machine and pulls it out the bottom to prevent tangling.

We laid the cut pasta out for a few hours to dry a bit, just to make sure it wouldn’t completely dissolve when we cooked it.

To cook, add a pinch of salt and a few drops of olive oil to your water before you boil it.

Fussellette said that this pasta was better than the stuff she finds at the store, because once the gluten-free pasta is dried it is hard to cook it all the way through and she says it’s often chewy on the inside.  Because this stuff is fresh it takes only about 6 minutes to cook and you know it will be nice and tender throughout.

Stay tuned on Wednesday to see what we did with it!

Blue Egg Group

Happy Friday the 13th!

I do not suffer from triscadecaphobia, the fear of Friday the 13th.  Normally it’s an extremely lucky day for me.

And true to form, what do I get but some fresh St. Phillips BLUE eggs, a gift from Miss Awesome?  It’s always my lucky day.

Aren’t these beautiful?

I don’t want to waste them on something banal, so stay tuned for the amazingness I plan to create with them.

I have a number of project ideas lined up for the next few weeks, but they all take a bit of time, so please be patient with me if the posts you’ve been seeing are a little simpler than you are used to.  As Blackadder would say, it’s all part of my cunning plan …

Chicken Fried Rice … for Danger K

I got a tweet on Friday from Danger K over at Project: Priceless, looking for a good fried rice recipe.  We happen to have one.  Actually, the Pie has one, which he modified himself from one of our many stir-fry books.  We make this one with chicken, but you can leave that out for a vegetarian option.  If you want to go vegan, you can leave out the egg as well.

So this is what you need:

Half an onion, diced.

A boneless, skinless chicken breast, cubed.  Add a splash of soy sauce to that.

An egg, beaten.

Two carrots, peeled and diced.

About one cup peas.  These are defrosted frozen ones.

A pinch or two of sliced green onion.

About two cups cooked rice, cold.  Preferably a day or two old.  The rice needs to be dry and no longer sticky.

In a large frying pan or wok, heat a tablespoon oil with a tablespoon minced garlic on medium heat.  Chuck in the onions and cook until they’re translucent.

Toss in the chicken and stir until the chicken is cooked through.

Make a well in the middle and pour in the beaten egg in a thin layer. Allow it to cook through and then break it up with your spatula and mix it in.

Add in all the vegetables and heat through, then add the rice and stir to mix.  Splash in some more soy sauce to taste.  When everything is heated up to your satisfaction, you can serve it.  And it’s as simple as that!