Vegetable Rice with Sausage and Egg

I've been trying to economize these last couple of months - for economizing's sake, thank goodness - and a variation of what became this was suggested by a friend when I complained about being tired of fried everything. If you've lived in the PRC, you know how cheap the ingredients are! And you've probably also used them (in combination with various other things) in countless fried rice and fried noodle dinners. It's so nice to have an alternative - not a big change up, but enough to keep me
from getting tired of all the rice! (I know, I know, I'm far from enculturated. I recently had a new coworker begin our first conversation with, 'Do you like rice? I love rice. I only eat rice!' In the past I would have dismissed such a story as stereotyping, but I have yet to meet someone here who thought a proper meal was complete without rice...)

Although this recipe began off of a friend's much more minimalistic recipe, it was helped along by my discovery of this recipe for tomato rice. (The whole blog is worth perusing - it was recommended to me a couple of days ago and I'm still going through it for ideas!) This particular dish could easily be made vegetarian - just substitute in some chopped mushrooms for the sausage. (It could also be made more awesome by substituting half the sausage with bacon!)

Vegetable Rice with Sausage and Egg

Ingredients

1/2 cup of uncooked rice

3/4 cup of water or broth

1 teaspoon of oyster sauce

1 teaspoon of sesame oil

1 teaspoon of soy sauce

Salt (to taste)

1/2 cup of sausage* (minced)

1/4 cup of carrot (minced)

1/4 cup of peas

Green onions (minced)

Sesame seeds (optional)

1/2 tablespoon of olive oil

1/2 tablespoon of sesame oil

Egg

Pepper (to taste)

Salt (to taste)

*I used the local northeastern Chinese sausage from Harbin, but I have friends who prefer the dried southern Chinese sausage (lap chong in Cantonese or là cháng in Mandarin).

Directions

1) Lord, bless!

2) Rinse your rice and put it in the rice cooker along with the broth or water, oyster and soy sauces, sesame oil, and a pinch of salt. (Swirl the pot a pit to make sure everything is mixed together and the rice is sitting evenly on the bottom of the pot.)

3) Sprinkle the sausage thinly on top of the rice so that it covers half of the surface of the inside of the pot. Repeat with the carrots and the peas, which together will cover the other half.

4) Let your rice cooker do its thing! Meanwhile, mince the green onions - as much or little as you want since it's for garnishing - and set aside.

5) Fry the egg in the olive and sesame oil. Sprinkle it with a little salt and pepper if you like. I prefer my eggs well done (as you can see in the picture!), but it can also be nice to have a sunnyside up egg to mix in with the hot, freshly cooked vegetable rice - it gives the whole dish a creamier texture than it would otherwise have.

6) Serve the fresh vegetable rice, sprinkle it with the green onion and sesame seeds, top with the fried egg, and enjoy! This recipe makes enough for one person's meal - assuming they're eating this without any sides - so if you're cooking for more and only want to eat this, increase the amounts!