Thursday, April 30, 2009

My Mom's Secret Shanghainese Vegetable Rice 上海菜飯

My Mom is Shanghainese and she's been cooking since she was 12, but she never writes her recipes down so I thought it's time for me to take notes on my family recipes which I hope will be passed on for generations!

I don't normally eat white rice on its own unless it's fried and has lots of soy sauce to go with it. I think Shanghainese Vegetable Rice is healthy, full of flavour, and with a little bit of Chinese Chili Sauce, I can easily eat two bowls! Some people prefer to use the chinese ham 金華火腿, my family is very health conscious so we use bacon/pancetta (see picture 1) instead, which is just as good!

This is easy and quick to make, the cooking time is just as long as a rice cooker takes to cook the rice. But the timing and the steps are the key to this recipe. First, the water in the rice must be less than what regular rice cooker needs. Second, the Pak Choy must not be overcooked (see picture 2) and third, it's important that vegetable and ham is not mixed into the rice too early, otherwise the rice will not be cooked thoroughly or the vegetable will be too overcooked/soggy (see picture 3).

1) 2)3)

Shanghainese Vegetable Rice

This is one of most popular Shanghainese dishes. Rice is ...

See Shanghainese Vegetable Rice on Key Ingredient.

8 comments:

Sugaractive said...

Thank you for sharing that!
The way I've been making the Vegetable rice has always been to just dump everything in at the beginning. No wonder it's not as good as my mom's!
I'll have to try this tonight!!

Dizzy Antelope said...

your picture is making me drool. i love the way you made the rice into a neat little pile. it's so perfect & cute. :)

pls clarify: do you pour & mix the ham's grease into the rice, when you add the ham? and it sounds like a lot of water... 1.25 cups + veggie liquid?

do you suppose this will work with japanese brown rice, too? i don't wanna buy a huge bag of 'regular' jasmine rice just to make this. ;P

Cat said...

Responding to Garbo's question, I add the grease to the rice with the ham as the grease will make the rice tastier. The water measurement depends on the rice cooker and amount of rice you use. Jasmine/Brown/Japanese rice is fine to use in this recipe. To cook regular rice, my rule of thumb is to always use your index finger, measure the water from top of the rice in the cooker to the first line of your index finger. But for this recipe, since you have the veggie liquid, you should use 20% less of the water you use for normal rice. So the more liquid you have from the veggie, less water you use.

Maggie said...

The picture looks so perfect, and the way you describe it sounded almost like even I can manage. :) Perhaps I will try that sometime. You know what's next? Video! We should do a video of you making something.

Sugaractive said...

I just tried your recipe. Alas, I used california brown rice instead of traditional jasmin rice. The result just isn't the same because fo the texture of the rice is different. (ie, it doesn't absorp the flavouring well and it's a bit crunchy). I'll have to try again this weekend with jasmine rice. :P

Dizzy Antelope said...

my trial number 1 results: 2/10. :(

Joanne said...

my trial was a failiure too. somehow not much water came out from my vegetables, and then the rice cooker finished cooking too fast. i tried to make it cook again but it refuses to, only keeping warm :(

Anonymous said...

will be trying out this recipe but without d meat as the people who will be eating it are vegetarians!! but am sure it will be more tasty with d meat..