Mother's day and Home

            Last week was Mother’s Day, so I decided to make shrimp fired rice. Since, the first chef ever appeared in my life was mom, and this dish was one of my first and favorite dish made by her. I remember as a child, I can always smell if she’s making shrimp fried rice, and I will just stare really hard into the kitchen table, wondering what sorcery my mom used to make it taste so extravagant. This time I want to make this dish for her, so when I go back to Taiwan, I can present this as my late Mother’s Day present. Also, a lot of my friends in other universities are already going back to Taiwan, so I made this dish to take some homesickness away.

            I still remember my mom taught me how to cook shrimp fried rice for my summer school project when I was in elementary school, and till this day I still have a general mental blue print in my mind on how to make this dish. This dish requires a few ingredients: Frozen Rice, small shrimp, eggs, and green onion. I was really worried when I was buying the green onion, because I was afraid it wouldn’t carry the rich flavor that Taiwan green onions have, and I feel like if I have to make a successful dish this is going to be really important. I decided to buy egg from our university’s grocery store, since it’s a cheaper and the eggs are freshly pick as well. I really wanted to make my own rice this time, but I still used microwave rice as a substitute because I couldn’t find a saucepan to cook the rice.

Cooking this time was really simple as well, so everything went out pretty smoothly. First, I need mix the frozen rice with egg yolk, so it will richen the flavor of the rice. In the mean time, slightly slice the back of the shrimps and put it into the beaten egg mixture, so this will make the shrimp cook faster and add flavor to the egg. When I was doing this I noticed how egg is such an important food in our lives. It provides us with all different kinds of protein and it adds this creamy, buttery, and cheesy taste to your dish. After all preparations are done, put the shrimp on the pan to fry for a couple minutes and then pour the beaten egg into the pan. Keep the fried egg moving around all times until the shrimps and the egg are medium well cooked, and add the rice into it. After about 5 to 7 minutes, the fried rice should be ready to serve.

I didn’t really meet any technical problems this time, but the one thing that bothers me was the rice. I really want to try making my own rice next time, because microwave rice just isn’t good enough. I am a picky person with rice; I like my rice to be perfect. Good rice contains two major components, its not too soft not too hard, and you can taste each single rice apart. Microwavable rice is good, but it’s not good for cooking and you can’t taste the rice apart from each other.

I really enjoyed making this dish today. My friends and family really liked the shrimp fried rice I made, and I’m really excited to make some of the dish that I made here to my mom when I go back. After finishing the dish, it really brought a lot of the homesickness I had away, and it reminded me of how life used to be so simple. As a kid, I always wanted to grow up, but growing up isn’t that fun. I always tell a lot of my younger friends to cherish the time they have now, because you will miss those days when you get older.