Rice was the first thing I was going to eat when I got home. I had decided that in my head during the 24 or so hours of travelling from Vancouver via Montreal, an unexpected stop in Toronto due to weather, a four hour delay in Montreal airport, then eventually on the final leg home to Heathrow where I watched (and cried to) Riceboy Sleeps as we descended upon England’s bucolic and dehydrated patchwork fields. In fact the first thing I ate was a Joe & The Juice turkey sandwich (extra pesto, add avocado) that I Uber Eats’d to my flat because my luggage is still in Montreal and I felt I deserved it. Approximately four hours later, still awake, I sat down on the shower, resting my forehead on my knees, the hot water hitting my neck in a way that made me think about the deep embrace of a man but also hot sticky rice.
That is all to say that I cooked one cup of rice (to 1.1 cups of water) and organised various other bits in the style of Korean banchan 반찬. Kimchi, deeply fermented and made by the hands of my mother months before; finely chopped broccoli and spinach cooked, drained then doused in sesame oil and soy sauce, left to cool to room temperature; and finally a tin of Fishwife x Fly By Jing smoked salmon bathed in chilli oil brought all the way from Los Angeles by my friend Sophia, who kindly left it on my living room table after crashing in my flat for a night.
But this recipe is not about that, but in fact about the leftovers I enjoyed for dinner the next day, and lunch again the next. It’s one of my favourite things about having leftover rice, takes less than 10 minutes to make and requires little to no effort. Perfect when operating on 20%.
There are two options, but both involve butter.
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