Yam Rice
Yam rice was my grandma’s staple dish on days she didn’t feel like whipping up a table-ful of dishes for lunch. It is up there with chicken rice as her favourite all-in-one-rice cooker meals.
Alas it wasn’t as easy to make as I thought it was. What’s so hard about throwing all the raw ingredients into the rice cooker and let it do everything? So I tried to make some the other day, and boy, it still took me over an hour to get the whole thing done! (My hubby has always said I’m a slow cooker, hehe)
My list of ingredients in very unscientific measurements (I was cooking for 4):
– 2.5 cups rice
– 1/2 a yam, cut into 1cm cubes
– a handful of dried shrimp
– 7-8 pieces shiitake mushroom
– scallion (for garnishing)
– 4-5 shallots, finely sliced (for garnishing)
– 300g pork or chicken
– light soy sauce
– dark soy sauce
– sesame oil
– 5 spice powder
– cornflour
– pepper
– cooking rice wine
Steps:
1) Marinate pork/chicken in sesame oil, half a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of sugar, a teaspoon of light soya sauce, a teaspoon of dark soya sauce, some cooking rice wine (optional), a teaspoon of cornflour, and a few dash of pepper.
Marinated sliced pork
2) Soak shiitake mushrooms, remove the stems and cut each piece into quarters.
Shiitake mushrooms soaked in water
3) Soak dried shrimp for about 15 mins, drain and set aside.
Dried shrimps
4) Peel the yam and cut into 1cm cubes. Heat up enough oil in a wok to fry the yam for 8-10 mins, until it is cooked. I tested a piece, a little crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. Scoop out yam into a bowl.
Frying the yam cubes
5) Fry the sliced shallots in the same oil until nice and crispy. Set this aside as garnishing.
Fried shallots
6) Fry the dried shrimp until fragrant.
7) With the bit of oil left, throw in the washed rice and fry with some light soy sauce for 1-2 minutes.
8 ) Transfer rice into rice cooker, add the mushroom, 3.5 cups water and cook. You can use chicken stock in place of water if you want more flavour in the rice.
9) When the water is boiling, add pork/chicken, yam, dried shrimp and let the rice continue to cook.
Yam rice is cooked!
10) Once rice cooker has finished the cooking, scoop out yam rice into big serving bowl and garnish with fried shallots and finely-sliced scallions.
Voila, fragrant yam rice is served!
Fragrant yam rice
Recipe was taken from the book Asian Retro Food by Betty Saw. I have a tendency of not following the recipes exactly, for example, she did not specify shiitake mushroom, but I liked mushrooms and so added it.
The hubby liked it a lot, so this was a success in my book.
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