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Tofu fried rice

 Fried rice is one of my "kitchen sink" dishes: whatever random bits and pieces I have around can easily be tossed in. I'm sure I'll have more of them on here before too long.

In fact, the only ingredients I need to make sure I have for making my fried rice are ginger, soy sauce, and, well, rice. Granted, sesame oil is always a perfect addition, and garlic and eggs are important, too, but I can live without them.

Tonight was fried rice with tofu, ginger, garlic, shallot, baby broccoli, carrot, orange bell pepper, kale, mushrooms, and eggs. I diced a block of super firm tofu, sliced the mushrooms, broccoli, and most of the garlic, diced the bell pepper, julienned the carrot, and minced the ginger, shallot, and a couple of the garlic cloves.

Starting off, I heated my wok up pretty hot and added in some sesame oil. Great flavor, great aroma...it may be my favorite oil, except for the higher price point. Once the oil was heated, I dumped in my minced ginger, garlic, and shallot. 

Once the aromatics were about half-cooked, I dumped in all of the tofu. I seasoned with a little bit of salt, a lot of black pepper, and also a generous shake of nutritional yeast (I usually throw this into most of my vegan dishes because I was told in 2017 that I should do that). I let the tofu brown on one side, then flipped everything and let the other side brown for a bit. At this point, I added in a palmful of red pepper flakes because I like some heat in case you didn't know.

Next came the broccoli and carrot. It took a bit of doing to get it mixed into all that tofu, but you want to get those veggies into the oil so they can cook and get some of the flavor from everything else already in there. After the broccoli and carrot were about half-cooked, I poured in about half a teaspoon of ground wasabi.

Once the wasabi was mixed throughout (as near as I could tell), I tossed in the bell pepper and sliced garlic, mixed them in and let them simmer in the oil for a solid 45 seconds or so, then dumped in the kale and mushrooms. At that point, I had to add a little more sesame oil as it was getting absorbed by various veggies. 

I kept that cooking until the kale was close to wilted, at which point I dumped in my cold rice. Had to break it up some before I could mix it in, but that's how you know it's cold enough.

After the rice was sufficiently mixed in, I added in some soy sauce around the edge of the wok, then tossed everything around to get it all nice and coated. At that point, I realized I had forgotten to add my eggs, so I cracked two into the bottom of the wok, let them fry quickly, then chopped them with my spatula and tossed everything around a little more. 

Once I finished the rice off with some sesame oil, it was time to engorge myself. I'll get a recipe written up at some point soon, but, for now, I need to sleep.

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