Omuraisu

I feel like we may have posted something about this before, but I can't find it, so sorry if it's a repeat.

This is something we like to do when we have rice left over in the rice cooker from the night before. If your rice cooker has a keep-warm feature, and you leave rice in it overnight or longer, it gets a little dry, and that's the perfect time to make fried rice dishes.

Ingredients:
cooked white rice, a couple of cups or so worth
6 eggs
grated parmesan cheese
shredded mozzarella cheese
ketchup
pepper
vegetable oil
milk

1. Heat some oil in a wok. Toss in the rice and stir fry it. Season it with a couple of squirts of ketchup and some ground pepper. Sprinkle some parm over it while you're stir-frying.

2. When the whole thing is a nice pink color and smelling good, transfer to dishes. This recipe makes enough to two people. Make a nice mound of rice in the middle of each plate. Sprinkle shredded mozzarella over the top. It should have almost entirely melted by the time you're done with the next steps; you can cover the dish with a plate to make sure it melts, if you want.

3. Mix the eggs together in a bowl with a little milk.

4. Heat more oil in a frying pan and pour the eggs in. The idea here is to make a really light fluffy omelette (omuraisu=omelette over rice). While the eggs are frying, keep whipping them in the pan with a pair of chopsticks or something to keep them frothy. When the omelette has solidified enough on the bottom, roll it up in the pan with a spatula.

5. Cut the omelette in half with the spatula and place each half on top of a mound of rice.

6. Here's the cool part. If the omelette has come out right, you can now take a sharp knife and cut it lengthwise and unfold it so that it covers the mound of rice, and the inside should still be runny/fluffy enough to turn into a steamy mess on top of the rice. Top with ketchup. Voila: you're done.

You don't normally associate ketchup with Japanese cooking, but this is a standard recipe in Japan. It even comes up in one of my favorite Japanese movies, Tampopo. Enjoy the scene here.