: : IMBB ~ Around the World in a Bowl of Rice : :
Wena : Aik! Today is the day lah!
Granny : Eh! What day?
Wena : Neh! Cook the fried rice lah.
Granny : Aiya! We have to go to market and buy the black black thing lah!
Wet Market.
Granny : Got aw kana or not?
Seller : Got! Last packet!
Granny : Old or not ah?
Seller : No lah! Not that old lah. Still ok one.
Granny : How much?
Seller : For you, ah, auntie, one ringgit only. Young people dunno how to eat this now lah.
And this is the aw kana which is similar to black olives. The skin is black but the flesh on the inside is very dark purple. It is extremely salty and the packet that we bought came from China. For today’s IMBB, since we are going around the world, we got rice from Thailand, the olives from China and a wonderful granny previously from Penang but residing in Sarawak now. These black olives are very very salty. It is so salty that once you put them into a little jar and chuck them into the fridge, it will be good to eat for at least one year! Granny says that it’s good to eat with porridge as it gives a nice salty taste to an otherwise bland meal.
Anyway, onto cooking the fried rice with aw kana. We had it at Lok Thian about a month ago and it was delicious. So, we decided to make it at home for the IMBB hosted by chez pim.
We cut some slices of chicken. Note that it needs to be in small strips.
Heat up some oil in a wok and stir fry about 1 teaspoon of the olive as well as the chicken until it’s cook.
Throw in about 3 cups of rice. The best rice to use is those that have been cooked the night before so that most of the moisture has dried up and the rice is less wet. If there is too much moisture in the rice, the final fried rice can be soggy. Anyway, mixed the rice and press down on it to mix it with the aw kana. If the skin of the olive is still in big pieces, use the frying stick to break it up into little pieces.
An egg is added into the rice and again, mixed and stirred until the whole dish has been cooked.
As the dish looked a bit colourless, we opened a packet of cashew nuts (salty ones) and used the nuts to add some colour and flavour to the dish.
And this is how it looks like : Fried Rice with Salty Black Olives. Nice, no? Believe me, it tasted really good. And I broke my Atkins fast today with this bowl of rice. The last time I ever had a bowl of rice was 4 weeks ago. It tasted so good! Note that if one would like a more salty flavour to the dish, just add in more black olives but be careful though! It is immensely salty!
For more dishes this Sunday, check out Pim’s blog for updates!