I realized recently that this blog is about cooking food with a newborn and I have shown a lot of cooking but no newborn. Most of these meals I’ve made while wearing him in a sling – the Baby K’tan. He’s really small and it’s the only one that keeps him remotely secure. It was important for me to figure out early how to watch him without feeling like I couldn’t do anything else, so he was in it the first day we got home.

Can we talk for a little bit about the name Baby K’tan? I’ve done some searching and can’t find any K’tans for later stages in life. I find that a little annoying.

When I made this meal, though, he was just getting used to
being in his car seat, so I rigged it up with a broom stick so I could rock him with my foot while still attending the stove.

On to the recipe…

My mother is a great cook, which she used to her advantage. When my sister and I were teenagers, we hosted afterparties at our house for proms or school shows. There would be dozens of people and we’d stay up all night. My mom would stay up all night, too, making food for us (and keeping an eye on things) and everyone loved it. One year she must’ve cooked three huge batches of fried rice until three or four in the morning.

We had some ginger rice left over from the fish dish that I figured I’d save for jook or this. Since we still had some jook, I made fried rice.

I took my inspiration from Gimme Some Oven’s fried rice recipe. I like that she’s been trying to perfect it for so long and that she uses a lot of butter. Here’s my version based on what I had available (and it was delicious):

leftover rice (maybe 2 cups?)
two boneless chicken thighs
carrots
broccoli
frozen peas
scallions
tamari/soy sauce
sesame oil
butter

1. Scrape (don’t slice) most of the fat off the chicken thighs – hold your knife at a 90° angle to the chicken and scrape away from the meat. Most of the fat will come away, and you want to leave some fat there anyway. Then cut the chicken into bite-sized bits.
   
2. I like to use the fat, so I rendered it in the pan by adding a little water and cooking it on low heat.
3. Take the solid fat out, add some butter and brown the chicken on med-high heat.
   
4. Take the chicken out, add more butter and hard scramble the eggs.
   
5. Take the eggs out, add more butter and cook the veggies according to how you like them. I started with the broccoli and carrots because they take the longest, then added the whites of the scallion, then the peas. Cook until everything is almost done.
   
6. Add the rice (cold) and cook it until it’s a little crispy. Things are going to start sticking to the pan at this point.
7. Add some tamari sauce and use the liquid to scrape some things off the bottom of the pan.
8. Finally, add the sesame oil, chicken, eggs, and scallion greens. Cook for another minute or so and serve.
   

Like I said, this was delicious and I’m not even sure if the left-overs made it until the next day. I might have eaten them while I was with the baby in the middle of the night.

Some of you might be asking, “Why chicken thighs and not breasts?” It’s because chicken thighs taste like something: chicken. Don’t ever eat chicken breasts; why would you do that to yourself?