Oki Family Fried Rice
Ingredients:
1 package of bacon, cut into ½ inch pieces
3 cups cooked rice
1 yellow onion, diced
2 eggs
Sugar (to taste, ½ tbsp at a time)
¼ cup Soy sauce (or to taste)
Instructions:
With kitchen shears, thinly cut bacon into ½ inch pieces. Add cut bacon to a large frying pan, cooking on medium-low heat.
While bacon is cooking, dice onion and put it into a pan with bacon. Allow bacon to cook completely and onion to turn translucent.
Once bacon and onions are done, reduce to low heat and add cooked rice, sugar, and soy sauce to the pan. Mix together. Taste and add more soy sauce / sugar to your liking.
In a separate skillet over medium heat coated in nonstick cooking spray, crack eggs into the pan carefully as not to break yolk. Fry eggs as you would an over-easy egg, only allowing the yolk to partially cook. Serve a bowl of fried rice with 1-2 over easy eggs on top. Best served warm. Refrigerate extra for up to 7 days.
“Unfortunately,” Mama said, “Grandma Oki’s recipes died with her. As much as I helped her with the cooking, the cookbook was entirely in her head.” Mama always had a hint of regret in her voice when she talked about my great grandmother, and how she didn’t write down her recipes while she was alive. No one knows exactly how Grandma Oki made her sweet inari or delectable chocolate rolls from scratch; “but luckily,” mama said, pulling herself out of her memories, “I paid enough attention to know how to make Grandma’s fried rice!”
As the strips of cut up bacon sizzled and the onions turned from opaque to translucent, my own little head paid no attention to the fumes wafting through the air, or the beep beep beep of the rice cooker telling us the rice was done. I was too busy watching every move mama made in the kitchen and making sure I memorized all the steps to the recipe. The crispiness of the bacon, not too soft nor too crisp, the slight burn to the edges of the onion pieces, the wooden spoon used to mix the two together in the pan.
“Grandma said wooden spoons were the best for cooking,” mama recalled while pouring the rice into the pan with the bacon and onions. I made sure to note that detail for when I made the dish myself. The wooden spoon, too big to fit with the other spoons, too small to be seen in the utensil holder, just perfect for Grandma’s rice. The spoon assisted mama by mixing in the soy sauce and evenly distributing the sugar. As she flipped it in her hand it brought her back to a time in her youth; watching her Grandma make this beloved family dish. Grandma Oki moving about, never taking precise measurements, just throwing in ingredients and stopping when her heart told her to. Mama carefully watching, trying to memorize each step. As soon as Grandma put the warm bowl of fried rice in front of her and told her to “eat it all gone”, she knew she’ll be making it herself one day.
As mama sets the bowl of steaming rice down in front of me and tells me to “eat it all gone”, I know that not every page of Grandma Oki’s cookbook was buried with her. That day when mama was a little girl watching her cook, Grandma had ripped out one of her recipes and slipped it into mama’s own book, among the blank pages that had yet to be filled in. Mama’s first recipe, one titled: Fried Rice.