The curse of the takeout box of rice: If you’re anything like me, you know it well. Shoved toward the back of your fridge — “Oh, I’ll use it later!” you promise yourself — it languishes, unused, unloved, its red pagoda and admonition of “ENJOY” glaring at you like some scarlet letter. Then, weeks pass until you unearth it, long after its useful life is up.
Guilt, frustration, the haunting of meals uneaten, all of it bubbles to the surface. But no more! After years of telling myself I would repurpose the extras, I now feel confident I will, because this dish is one of my favorite things I’ve made and eaten lately.
The “fresh” fried rice you get from your local carryout is often so underwhelming. No surprise, homemade is better (and can even use up the bits and pieces of other dishes, too).
Perhaps no one knows her way around a quick, improvised stir-fry better than cookbook author Grace Young (“poet laureate of the wok,” according to one food historian, and owner of the Twitter handle @stirfrygrace).