Sinangag aka Fried Rice

Whenever I have leftover cooked rice, I make some kind of 'Sinangag' (fried rice) with it. Usually I'll just add garlic, carrots and eggs. But if I have some shrimp leftover from dinner, I recycle it and add it to my sinangag.

Nothing special with this recipe, as you all know, making sinangag is a 'no-brainer'. The trick to making a 'great' sinangag against a 'so-so' version is the rice. It has to be dry or else you will end up with a 'mushy' blob. Cooking it long enough to get the right texture is the key. Wait, did I say 'it's a no-brainer'? I guess not. LOL

In most of the Chinese restaurants I've been to here in New England, their fried rice is very dark because they use soy sauce in it. It was quite a shock really, after being used to the ones in California. I made it once with soy sauce but it didn't turn out quite as dark. I tried adding Oyster Sauce but found it too sweet. In my one and only Chinese recipe book (authored by Eileen Lo), there is a recipe for fried rice. If I remember it correctly (since I'm too lazy to get up from my seat and check) there is a concoction of Chinese cooking wine, soy sauce, oyster sauce, etc. I made it a couple of times and it is very good but surprisingly not as dark as the restaurants'.

If you are having Tocino, Longganisa, daing na Bangus or some kind of dried fish like Tuyo or Danggit, it won't be as satisfying if you do not pair it with sinangag. I guess it's just nostalgia. In the Philippines, our maid always cook sinangag for breakfast every time we have Tocino, etc.

Old habits die hard, wouldn't you say so?

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