It is St Patrick’s Day and this is corned beef. Not the Irish traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage but it is corned beef. And in Asia it is one of our favorite canned meat. So here it is, Asian St. Patrick’s Day food.
We in Singapore have cooked corned beef for generations. I remember Mum telling us that it was one of the canned foods, including sardines, her father stored in their home just before World War Two, before the Japanese Occupation. At home when I was growing up in the 60s, Lan Jie would cook it with fried onion and sometimes we also added curry powder to it. A friend taught me the way Eurasians in Singapore cooked this, in a stew or broth, more like the Irish version.
I’ve noticed that this canned product is popular in the Commonwealth countries and perhaps it is our colonial influence that this in popular in Singapore. Here in the U.S. many of my friends haven’t tried it. I think it is ranked with the dubious honor of Spam.
In the Philippines, we learned to eat the canned version with the Filipino iconic food Garlic Rice. Our cook Dory taught us to top the meal with a runny, over-easy egg.
Garlic Rice is super tasty considering how simple and few the ingredients are. All there is to the fried rice is fried garlic. Try it, you’ll be surprised how delicious it is. It’s like Aglio E Olio, pasta with garlic and oil.
This was Russell’s favorite breakfast when he was about two years old. We used to say he ate like a Filipino boy. It still is a favorite quick lunch for my family. The meal is perfect especially when you have leftover rice. Fried rice was the first thing Russell learned to cook; he liked it that much.
I used to make it for Russell’s football mates when they had sleepovers at our place. It is simple to cooked huge portions for this. Imagine some eight or 10 boys hungry at brunch after not sleeping at night. They loved it, thought Asian food was the best.
This is the meal: fry the rice with garlic. Fry and heat up corned beef separately, fry an egg and top it over the rice and beef. It takes less than 20 minutes. Chop up and use as much garlic as you love.
My favorite brand of canned corned beef is Libby’s but recently I noticed several brands I had never seen before. I’ve tried the Palm Brand, from New Zealand. Alison and I thought that they had chunkier pieces of meat that made it feel like meat, more so than what we were used to.
A word of caution: there is fish sauce in my version of Garlic Rice and for those who have never tried fish sauce, do NOT be turned off by its stinky odor when you pour out the stuff. For more on Fish Sauce, click here. Even when frying it, it would smell stinky to the uninitiated but that stinky fish sauce, trust me, is what makes it so tasty.
If you really can’t stand it or don’t have fish sauce, substitute with salt. A good salt. Like French grey?
Cook this quick easy meal for lunch or for a pot luck. Your friends will think you are a genius.
Filipino Garlic Rice With Corned Beef and Egg
Garlic Rice
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 10-15 minutes
3 cups of cooked rice
6 cloves (or a whole head) of garlic, finely chopped
3 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoon fish sauce (to taste)
Salt to taste
In a non-stick pan, heat oil. Add garlic and fry till garlic is almost golden.
Quickly add rice. Break up rice with spatula. Stir and mix the garlic and oil well with the rice. With the spatula, scoop up the rice at the bottom with the garlic and put it on top so that the rice is evenly mixed with the oil and garlic. Keep scooping and frying.
Sprinkle fish sauce and salt over rice. Fry and keep tossing the rice gently for another 2-3 minutes until rice is evenly coated with the garlic oil and fish sauce. Allow the rice to dry out just a little bit. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.
Corned Beef Accompaniment For Garlic Rice
Preparation and cooking time: 5 minutes
3 tablespoons oil
2 cloves of garlic, chopped or sliced (optional)
½ can of corned beef
1 or more eggs (optional)
Heat half the oil. Fry garlic till golden and then add beef. Stir well till beef is heated through. Dish beef over garlic rice.
Fry a sunny-side egg with rest of the oil and place on top of rice and beef.
Notes
For Garlic Rice: Be careful not to brown the garlic until it gets dark and burn. You don’t want burned black garlic pieces in the rice. Not only is it unattractive, the garlic will be bitter.
My Indonesian friend Debora Loppies once complained to me that her Garlic Rice was not as good as mine. She’d seen me done it often so I asked her what she put in hers. She said she added an egg.
Really? That makes it Chinese-style Fried Rice and not Garlic Rice!
Just use oil, garlic and fish sauce. You can adjust and use these ingredients generously. Adding anything else takes away the wonderful garlic essence and it will not be the authentic Garlic Rice that is the Filipino favorite. It’s best to use day-old rice but freshly cooked rice works well too. Allow the rice to dry up a little with the frying.
I also favor using the long grain Jasmine rice for this. Short grain rice is a little too starchy for this dish.
Banquet ideas
When I recently made this for a group, I served the corned beef with a simple, scrambled fried egg. You can also serve the beef and egg over a large plate of rice.
