Excerpt from Three Dishes One Soup - Inside the Singapore Kitchen by Lace Zhang.
Leftover steamed rice. Sizzling garlic. Spring onions. A couple of beaten eggs. All tossed together until the rice is dry, fragrant and dancing around in the wok. There is something very satisfying about using up the odds and ends you have lying around in the kitchen to create a meal. That bit of spring onion stashed in the cooler compartment, the one lone slice of ham in its crumpled paper or that sad bit of ginger left sitting in the corner. There’s no better dish to make use of odds and ends than fried rice.
That being said, I loathe to call this a recipe. It’s more a blueprint or an idea. Everyone has their own version of fried rice seared into their food memory bank, the one that grandma or mum cooked so often at home, the one that’s familiar and comforting. This is my version of that dish. My grandma always made hers with a good amount of grated ginger, its slight heat permeating the entire dish like a warm hug, and studded with chunks of salty-sweet Chinese sausages and saline chunks of fishcake. This is the style of fried rice I secretly favour and gravitate towards. Food is after all, memory.
