Photos: Tom Philpott
At around lunchtime Friday afternoon, I was working on a blog post when when my stomach began to rumble. I suddenly remembered: I had promised my editor a Tom’s Kitchen post. So, not only was I faced with mid-day hunger, but also another writing assignment. Meanwhile, I groaned, there’s nothing to eat in this damned house!
I took a deep breath and made a list of what we did have. There was certainly no time for a trip to the store. I remembered some garlic sprouting in the back of the field—not the garlic we planted last fall, but some semi-wild garlic that’s been coming up every year from a patch that never got harvested a few years ago. It never matures into full garlic in the summer, but it provides a delicious late-winter/early-spring treat, sort of like a garlicy-tasting scallion (see photo below). There’s also some kale and collards in the greenhouse, some salad greens in the field, and red-hot chile peppers we dried last summer.
Meanwhile, our laying hens have been coming up with fantastic eggs—rich orange yolks, no doubt because we’ve been letting them range out of their coop by day, and they’ve been finding all manner of good chicken food (worms, bugs) up the mountainside as the weather has warmed recently.
I concluded that all of the above ingredients—plus rice, soy sauce, and ginger we also had around—could be slapped together into a quick fried rice. After all, Tom’s Kitchen has always been about making good, quick meals from whatever’s on hand, not fancy stuff that requires shopping.
Spicy Fried Rice with Eggs and Greens
Serves three
1.5 cups brown rice
Oil, for sauteing (I used olive oil this time)
3-4 stalks green (immature) garlic; or 1-2 cloves of regular garlic
1 red hot chile pepper
1 knuckle-sized nub of ginger, peeled
1 bunch of collards and/or kale (I used a combo)
3 eggs
Soy sauce (my absolute favorite brand is Ohsawa Nama Shoyu)
Salad greens, to serve over
1) Put rice in a heavy-bottomed pan with a tight-fitting lid, add a little less than 3 cups of water, and bring to boil, covered, over high heat. When the water boils, turn heat to the lowest setting. Set a timer for 40 minutes.
2) In a large cast-iron or other heavy frying pan, add oil to cover bottom and turn heat to low. Peel the tough outer stalks from the green garlic (or peel the regular garlic, if using), and mince, along with the chile pepper and the ginger. Add the minced aromatics to the frying pan and let them gently cook over low heat, stirring occasionally.
3) Lay the collards and/or kale leaves flat on a cutting board and roll them up like an, um, roll-your-own cigarette. Slice them cross-wise, creating little ribbons, and add them to the pan with the garlic/ginger/chile mix. Stir them, coating them with oil, add a splash of soy sauce, and cover, letting them steam over low heat in their own liquid and the soy sauce until they’re tender, stirring and checking occsionally.
4) Crack the eggs into a bowl, add a splash of soy sauce, and beat them until the yolks, whites, and soy are just blended. 
5) When the rice alarm goes off, make sure all the water has evaporated. If not, keep cooking until it does, and then turn the heat off, leaving the pot covered.
6) When the rice is done and the greens are tender, add the rice to the skillet with the greens and turn the heat up to medium, mixing the rice with the greens and frying it a little. After a minute or two, clear space in the middle of the skillet by pushing the rice greens mix to the edges of the skillet. Add a few drops of oil to the cleared part of the skillet, wait a few seconds, then pour the eggs into the clearing. Let them fry there for 30 seconds or so, then, using a spatula, toss it all together. Turn heat to low, and let the whole thing cook another minute or two. Taste for seasoning—it might want a bit more soy sauce.
7) Put a handful each of of salad greens on three plates. Top with a good portion of fried rice, leaving some behind for seconds. Eat.
