cook: spam kimchi cabbage fried rice

I specifically cooked rice for fried rice shortly after the new year to use up leftover prime rib which became our dog’s dinners instead. Enter SPAM, that delectable pork and ham and salt and potato starch and sodium nitrate treat introduced to the Philippines by the American military. And mostly kimchi juice but not much kimchi in a jar in my fridge. Luckily I’ve cabbage in my fridge too. And lots of scallions. Kimchi fried rice has become my no recipe-recipe. I squeezed the kimchi and chopped it and extended it to a cup and half with chopped raw cabbage. I coated the stale rice with drops of sesame oil. I opened a can of lite Spam, reserving a quarter of it for sandwiches later and chopping the rest into bite-sized pieces. Added gochuchang, soy sauce, and Maggi to the kimchi juice. Finally I got to cooking. I browned the SPAM, set it aside; browned the kimchi and cabbage, set it aside.

 

Next I heated and colored the rice with the seasoned kimchi juice to turn the jasmine rice red as well as the whites of two chopped scallions.

 

The rice was crispy and done, and so I fried an egg in a separate pan. Only the egg got cooked too hard while I tried to get my whites set and crisp on the edges. Patrick said he had to show me how it's done. Get your canola oil hot and shimmering in the nonstick and then crack your egg into it.

 

The key to getting the white firm and letting the yolk remain runny is to cover it, he said. And here's Patrick's beautiful egg atop his portion of kimchi fried rice without me ruining it with additional chopped scallions.

 

The man does like a fried egg for dinner. I'll have to remember to get him a package of English muffins for those vegetarian dinner nights when I don't feel like cooking.