Fried Rice

I remember in college, my friend Nicole reading a cooking magazine with a recipe for fried rice and talking about how ridiculous it was to actually need a recipe for fried rice. It seemed so simple to make, it was as ridiculous as writing an instruction manual for how to walk down the street.  That said, when I started making fried rice about a year and a half ago, I did consult Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything for guidance.  From this recipe, and with a lot more experience, I have learned that it's all about dry rice and enough oil. If you have those 2 things right, then you just need the right flavors in the right amounts: 1 clove garlic, about a tsp-worth of diced fresh ginger, 2 Tbsp soy sauce, and only 1 egg (even for a large amount of rice).

We make this pretty often, since we always have leftover rice that gets saved for days. Yesterday for lunch we decided to use up the rice along with some other ingredients in the fridge. For this recipe we started with sliced turkey bacon, and had no need to add any oil at all, after all the grease was released. Gave the rice a wonderful flavor.

Ingredients:
- turkey bacon, sliced
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1 tsp fresh ginger, minced
- 1 stalk celery, chopped fine
- 2 green onions, diced
- 2 to 3 cups of old, dry rice
- 1 egg, beaten
- 2 Tbsp soy sauce
- leftover pork loin, diced

Fry the bacon; add garlic, ginger, celery to pan. Add rice and green onions. Saute until rice is separated and well cooked. Make a well in the center of the rice. Add beaten egg, then work egg into the rice with a spatula. Add the pork. Add soy sauce.

Before adding soy sauce

Finished Fried rice