Fried Rice

Ingredients:
4 cups White Rice (I use Japanese Rice)
1 pound Uncooked Shrimp
2 Chicken Breasts (as cooked in my Chicken and Broccoli recipe)
4 Eggs
3 Chinese Sausages
3/4 Frozen Peas and Carrots
Green Onion, to taste
Ginger, to taste

Soy Paste (probably the most important ingredient after the rice)
Oyster Sauce (Hoisin is fine)
Butter
Vegetable Oil
Soy Sauce
Rice Wine
Garlic Powder
White Pepper
Black Pepper
Corn Starch

Hardware:
No less than 5
1 Large Bowl (Big enough to hold all the rice
1 Colander
1 Small Pot
1 Pan (4 is optimal)
1 Large Wok

Instructions:
1. Cook the rice, stupid. When the rice is done, let it sit and warm in the rice cooker for 10 minutes or so then spoon the rice out into the large bowl and let cool. Rotate the rice every so often.

2. In the small pot, bring a couple cups of water to a boil and dump in the frozen peas and carrots. Boil until tender, strain in colander, then set aside in a prep bowl.

3. Chop the ginger and green onion into small pieces. Like this and this, respectively. Set aside in a prep bowl.

4. Cook the chicken according to the recipe. In layman's terms, cut into thin, bite sized pieces and marinate for no more than 15 minutes with some soy sauce, rice wine, garlic powder, white pepper, and corn starch. Pan fry with either butter or vegetable oil until you get that nice brown. Set aside in a prep bowl.

5. Shell and devein the shrimp if needed. Half them along their median plane and pan fry them, finishing them off with a little bit of garlic powder. Treat yourself to one, you've been in the kitchen for a while. If you don't like shrimp, you can go to hell. Set cooked shrimp aside in a prep bowl.

6. Cut the Chinese sausage like this and pan fry them with a little bit of oil for about 3 minutes. You want them to be tender, but not cook too much because they eventually get hard. Set aside in a prep bowl.

7. Beat the eggs with some milk and white pepper and scramble them. Yeah, set aside in prep bowl.

8. Put the large wok on medium high meat and pour in a fair amount of cooking oil. When the oil is hot enough, dump in the green onion and ginger prep bowl and let this simmer alone for no more than 30 seconds. You want to flavor the oil, but not burn the onion and especially not the ginger. Dump in cooled rice, chicken, peas and carrots, shrimp, and Chinese Saugsage.

9. Top with a fair amount of soy paste and little amount of soy sauce and oyster sauce. Don't over do the soy sauce or oyster sauce because the majority of the flavor and color comes from the soy paste. Rotate the whole thing, mixing everything together. Don't stir; it's more of a folding process.


Notes:
-Shrimp is a tricky thing. In this photo, I used uncooked shrimp that I bought from behind the meat counter that was deveined, but still had the tail and shell on. However, I've also used uncooked shrimp with the shell, vein, and tail intact. The important part is that you buy uncooked shrimp, with the shell on, preferably.
For 2/3 of my shrimp, I took the shell and tail off, then halved them. The remaining 1/3, I took only the tail off, leaving the shell on the whole shrimp. I cooked the whole shrimp with the shell on, then shelled them after cooking because a lot of the shrimp's flavor is from its shell. That's why if I'm going to use frozen shrimp, I want the shell still on.