This is getting just a little dull because everything went so swimmingly. Night 3 was the night of the Lamb Fried Rice, again using a portion of the already-braised lamb.

Night II’s Lamb-Spinach Casserole (with mayonnaise) is pretty damn Sixties, but something about Lamb Fried Rice is equally throwback. As Peter said, “It’s like eating at Dragon Cantonese on Highway 86,” and for all I know he was referring to a real place from his childhood, but it sounds so archetypal that it doesn’t really matter.

To his credit, Capon does use this recipe as the jumping-off point for nearly eight pages of detail on the art of stir-frying with the proper Chinese technique, as well as where and how to buy a wok (which is italicized, like a foreign word, which is kind of cute). He dispenses such wisdom as “When the dish looks good, it is good” (w/r/t vegetable doneness) and that “if someone comes along and tells you cleanliness is next to godliness, the proper answer is, ‘Yes–next. Right now I’m working on godliness.'” (w/r/t not scrubbing down iron cookware).

He develops this latter theme nicely, suggesting that you can loosen up your family on the cleanliness issue by “accustom[ing] them to a little harmess but definite untidiness in their food. An occasional burned paper match dropped into the gravy will help them relax a bit….A sense of proportion is a saving grace.”

So with this lax attitude, I took a closer look at the recipe, but immediately got all uptight again. I hadn’t realized what preconceptions I had about fried rice. “What, no garlic?” said Peter. “Of course no garlic!” I gasped. Some weird animal part of my brain that hardened at age 10 says no garlic in fried rice. I refused to let Peter tinker, even though he’d been granted cooking rights because stir-frying is his specialty. He got to make some green beans for the side dish, and they were all garlicky, gingery, Sichuan-peppery–all the pent-up flavor that was stymied by retro-bland fried rice.

But, y’know, it wasn’t all that bad. It did make me a little nostalgic. Though to be my childhood fried rice, there should’ve been more egg (the recipe called for three eggs, for more than three cups of rice), and bean sprouts. Actually, as you’ll see from the original ingredients, bean sprouts are an option “if you have money to burn.” Three decades of Chinese American entrepreneurship has brought the cost of bean sprouts down to the average consumer, apparently, but my corner guy doesn’t have them. I suppose I could’ve gotten canned ones, as suggested in the more detailed recipe on p. 135, but even I have my limits for retro kitsch.

Although I wouldn’t let Peter augment the base recipe (just onions, shredded cabbage, eggs, a drop or two of sherry, cooked rice, the lamb, and soy sauce), we did spice it up with a side of that sweet-hot gooey Korean chili paste–an excellent addition for modern tastes.

We fed four people, rather than eight, but had scads of leftovers, and I hadn’t even used the full complement of rice. Nor did I rely on the plate-of-lettuce trick to fill people up, or dropped any foreign objects in the food to discourage their appetites. And somehow, this preparation was different enough that I wasn’t sick of lamb…yet.

Next post in the series:
1L/8X4 V: Night IV Report, aka “Original Thinking Is Lonely”

Previously in the series:
Live coverage: Lamb for Eight Persons Four Times
1L/8X4: The Prologue
1L/8X4: Prep for Night 1
1L/8X4 II(a): Night I Report
1L/8X4 II(b): The Freakin’ Spaetzle
1L/8X4 III: Night II Report
1L/8X4 IV: Night III Report