Accidental, Occidental Fried Rice

For most of us, fried rice means Chinese style fried rice. I used to love the stuff as a kid (and before my 14 years of not eating un-kosher animals), and would pick out the red bits of pork and eat them first, just as I did the chips in mint-chip ice cream. But now the only time I have fried rice is when I ask for brown rice and mistakenly get it instead (though technically it is both brown and rice).

If you've ever had risotto cakes, you know that, unlike a restaurant that only serves penises, the concept of taking rice and frying it is not exclusively owned by the Chinese. (If you didn't click that link, know that it won't disappoint you.)

I recently did so with leftover, cooked Carolina Gold rice that I bought in the Lowcountry. I fried it up into little rice cakes that turned out about a million times better than the airy health food snack that bears the same name. But when I took my first bite, I realized that I had accidentally added seafood stock instead of chicken. As a result it tasted like a shortcut to using a full blown seafood risotto. In other words, the happy kind of accident.

Depending on the texture of your rice, you might be able to fry it as is. I added a dash of spelt flour and the aforementioned stock, plus plenty of black pepper. The cakes were crispy on the outside and as moist and lush as a Lowcountry summer on the inside. But best of all, they weren't a penis.

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Recipe: Fried Leftover Rice

Note: Depending on the consistency of your rice, you might need to add more or less liquid or flour, or nothing at all.

1 cup cooked rice (any kind)
1/4 cup stock (or water)
2 tbsp flour
black pepper
canola oil

Mix the rice, stock, flour and pepper.

Coat a skillet with sufficient oil for frying and set the burner to high.

When the oil is hot, drop in small handfuls of the rice batter. Once the crust begins to creep up the edges of the cakes, press gently to flatten, then flip and repeat on the B-side.

Serve hot and eat plain or with warm red sauce, which provides a welcome acidity.

Eating the Low Country: Part II

There I was, at the Squat and Gobble with a steaming plate full of fresh, local shrimp and grits in front of me. I don't really eat shrimp these days, ever since I realized how much of it was farm raised and how much of the farm raised stuff was coming from places like Indonesia. There we persuade farmers to trade their native mangrove forests for disease infested pools of heavily concentrated shrimp pumped full of chemicals we've banned in the U.S.

There are even those (like National Geographic) who partly link the devastation of the tsunami of 2004 to the absence of natural buffers like mangroves, many of which had been turned into shrimp aquaculture by the time the wave struck. And having grown up poking around the mangroves of South Florida, I find it hard to exchange old friends for a food I could substitute with chicken.

But the shrimp at the S&Q were pulled out of the water just a few miles away. They were plump, moist, pink and downright bouncy. I adored them, despite the positively raunchy decor.





For those who don't know, the Low Country is a coastal area of Georgia and South Carolina marked by beaches, salt marshes, small islands, inlets, and an at once gothic and comforting mix of Spanish moss and palm trees. The region spans two states and drips with history, from pirates to the Civil War.

The area is also home to many Gullah and Geetchee, some of whom still occupy the oldest free communities of blacks in the U.S. Sadly, much of their culture has been replaced by resorts on the desirable sea islands that had been their homes. Hilton Head, for instance.

But what better way to show your support than spending all your dough at their restaurants and farmers market stands? As I believe Wendell Berry (or was it Morgan Spurlock?) said, and I paraphrase, "every time you eat, you vote."

Low Country cuisine is very much like general Southern cooking, though it leans heavily on seafood and features more of the Caribbean and African influences, not unlike Cajun or Creole cooking in New Orleans. Local specialties include she-crab soup, gumbo, Lowcountry boil, Frogmore stew, oyster roast, and real South Carolina rice. Why we don't hear more about it as a regional eating destination I honestly don't know.

At the end of the day we had another plane to catch, so I knew I had to eat as much of the L.C. as I possibly could before flying back to Boston and wistfully gazing at the shrimp filled waters far below. Given the time crunch, right after the shrimp and grits at the Squat and Gobble, I immediately moved on to oysters.