Tuesday 8 April 2014

The "Hidden Vegetable" in Teriyaki Fried Rice

Cabbage is one of the vegetables that I often have in my fridge because it can be stored for a longer period of time compared to other vegetables. However, the problem is that JS does not really like it. Whenever I cook it as a vegetable dish (usually with carrots), he would ask: "Why must I eat cabbage?" Nevertheless, I would still serve it to him and he would eat them with an unhappy face until I accidentally discovered a way of getting him to eat this vegetable with a smile on his face. That was when I served him teriyaki fried rice with lots of cabbage. 

A little background on when I started cooking teriyaki chicken. It was more than a year ago when I stumbled upon a food blog by Nami called Just One Cookbook which has this recipe (http://justonecookbook.com/recipes/chicken-teriyaki/). Since then, this dish has been one of our favourite. It is easy to prepare and tastes really good. 

As I am usually very busy during the day, I often prepare lunch using leftover dishes from the previous night because it can be done in a shorter period of time. So, fried rice is quiet a regular lunch for us. 

There was once when I prepared teriyaki chicken for lunch, I had quiet a lot of sauce left because I love to marinate the meat with lots of onion and ginger (more than what was stated in the recipe). I decided to fried garlic rice using the same wok (with lots of sauce still in it) right after I cooked the chicken. It so happened that I did not have any spring onion on hand so I decided to use cabbage instead. 

When I served it to JS, I was silently praying that he would eat it because he usually did not like cabbage but to my surprise, he did not even mention the word cabbage and he finished the whole bowl  happily. Now I can secretly make him eat this vegetable without him questioning me why he should eat it!

As I have posted the link of the recipe for teriyaki chicken here (in the second paragraph), I would only share with you the recipe for the fried rice. 

First, of course, you will have to cook the teriyaki chicken, with lots of grated onion and ginger so that you will have enough sauce for the fried rice. 

So, after cooking the chicken, do not remove all the sauce from the wok (or pan). Use the same wok (or pan) to fried the rice. 

The ingredients for the fried rice are refrigerated cooked rice, finely chopped garlic, finely chopped cabbage, eggs and some salt to taste.
Heat up the wok (or pan) which contains the teriyaki sauce. Scramble the eggs and set aside. Stir fry the garlic until fragrant and add in the cabbage and salt. When the cabbage is cooked, add in the rice and mix well. Lastly, add in the scrambled eggs. 

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