Patron Exclusive Recipe #6 Shiitake Mushroom and Jinhua Ham Flavored Rice (香菇火腿焖饭)

Sup guys~ Hope you're doing great. This week's been a bit busy and only get to write the stuff now.

So this week, I want to share a flavored rice recipe with you. Unlike fried rice, flavored rice (焖饭) is the kind of rice where you put stuff in your rice and cook with it (a little bit like Cantonese clay pot rice but for flavored rice most of the ingredients goes in at the beginning). And this is the shiitake mushroom, Jinhua ham and peas version.  

Quick, easy, and tasty, a nice way to flavor up your rice to go along a meal. And, it's a great candidate for lunch box/bento/onigiri too! 

Let's begin.

 **Ingredients** (Serves two along with another dish)

1. Jasimine rice, 100g.

2. Sticky rice, 100g. You can use straight up Jasimine rice or whatever non-glutinous rice you have. But some regions in China, especially in Jiangnan area, people use half rice and half sticky rice, or even straight up sticky rice. I love the soft and chewy texture of it, so I used the half/half mix.

3. Water, 260g. (Save part of the mushroom soaking liquid and used as part of your cooking water.)

4. Dried shiitake mushroom, 10g. Soaked for 3-4 hours, reserve the soaking liquid.  Usually in this time of year, flavored rice with bamboo shoot is one of people's favorites but I figured you probably couldn't get bamboo shoot, so I use the equally rich in umami shiitake mushroom. 

5. Chinese ham, 50g (before "peeling" the brown layer).

6. Fresh/frozen peas, 50g.

(That's all we need)

(50/50 mix of Jasimine and sticky rice)

  **Process**  

Before we start, a note on cooking utensil. Rice cooker is highly recommended for this kind of flavored rice as it's so convenient. But if you don't own one, you can also do stove top as in this recipe (I made stove top version as I'm afraid that you may not have a rice cooker). 

Note on seasoning, ham is pretty salty, so we don't need extra salt. If your rice is not salty enough to your taste, you can always add some soy sauce at the end.

1. Gently rinse the rice till water runs clear, put it in your pot or rice cooker, add in the mushroom soaking liquid and any extra water if needed. The total weight of your rice+water should be 200g+260g=460g. Let it soak for half an hour while you prep other ingredients. 

****If you're using 50/50 mix of Jasimine rice and sticky rice, and using stove top to cook the rice, then let it soak for at least one hour as sticky rice is a bit harder to cook through.

(Let the rice soak for half an hour, or one hour for stove top method.)

2. Prep the mushroom.  Toss the stem and we need to dice it. If your mushroom is quite thick, cut horizontaly in half like a sandwich (where my finger is pointing in the picture). Then cut into strips, then small dice.

(cut horizontally from here if too thick)

("Sandwich it")

(Cut into strip and ~5mm small dice, about rice grain size)

3. Prep the ham. For Chinese hams, you'll need to cut off the oxidized brown outer part before using it (where my finger is pointing, just thinly slice the brown bits off). Then cut into strips and cut into ~5mm dice.

(Cut off the brown layer)

(Only using the pink inside part)

(Same size dice as mushroom)

4. Now we quickly fry the ingredients. (If you're lazy, you can toss them in the rice and starting the cooking process directly, but frying them first lends a better flavor). 

First longyao, get your piping hot, shut off the heat, add in the oil, give it a swirl to get a nice non-stick surface. 

Heat on low now, toss in your mushroom, give it some mix. When you start to smell the mushroom aroma, add in a splash cooking wine, give it a quick mix. 

Then season with half tbsp soy sauce and half tsp sugar, mix. 

Then in with your ham, give it a quick stir fry. Frying, done.

5. Now add your fried mushroom and ham dice to the rice that's been soaking. Mix well.

6. Now turn the heat on for the rice. (If you're using rice cooker, you can just press the rice cooking button and move onto the Step 7.) 

If you're doing stove top, so first, bring your pot of rice+water to a boil. After it comes to a boil, turn the heat to low. To avoid burning, it'd better if you can lift your pot a bit with another rack like I did in the picture. 

It'll usually take about 15-20 minute for stove top. 

Watch for the steam. Steam coming out mean it's in the cooking process and there's still water. 

If there's not much steam coming out, then it means the rice has absorded most of the water and it's almost done. Now let it cook for a bit longer but you would need to watch it carefully. 

If slight white smoke starts to come out, that means the rice has absord all the water and the bottom is starting to get brown. Then you can shut off the heat and let it sit for another 20-30 minutes on stove top (don't be tempted to open the lid and check on the rice during the sitting time). 

(If your pot's small and sits too close to heat source, better lift it up with another rack like this)

7. While we press the rice cooker button/waiting for the rice to come a boil, we blanch the peas in the same frying wok we just used. Toss in the peas in boiling water, take it out right after it turned into brighter green. Then toss in a bowl of cool water to stop the cooking process. 

(Just blanch it in the same wok)

(In cool water to stop cooking)

8. So after your rice cooker tells you that your rice is done, or your pot of rice finish sitting. Time to strain and add in the peas, mix well, let it sit for another 5 mintues. 

(Mix in the peas. Preferably use a bigger pot then I did, it was very difficult to mix, lol.)

9. After the final 5 minutes of sitting, the rice is ready to serve. 

Hope you like it. See you next week. :)