Arroz chaufa

As tradition built it

Arroz chaufa

Ingredients

• as needed oil
• 300g chicken, diced
• 3, optional hot dogs, sliced
• 720ml cooked rice
• a finger kion (ginger), chopped or grated
• as needed cebollita china (spring onion), white and green parts apart
• 3 eggs, beaten
• to taste salt and pepper
• 60ml sillao (soy sauce)
• 10 drops sesame oil

Method

1. Heat oil in a frying pan over a high heat and fry the chicken, and the hot dog if you use it, until golden. Take it out.
2. In the same pan heat a splash of oil and fry the rice, in batches, so it can be tossed and picks up a little smoke.
3. Push the rice out to the edges, put a tablespoon of oil in the middle, and fry the kion and the white of the spring onion.
4. When they are golden, add the eggs, seasoned with salt and pepper, and stir without stopping so they work into the rice.
5. Toss it, return the chicken, add the sillao and the sesame oil, and toss again.
6. Take it off the heat, scatter over the green of the spring onion, and serve.

Notes

The name itself, like chifa, derives from Cantonese, chaufa read as the Cantonese term for fried rice carried whole into Peruvian Spanish. Home cooking absorbed this dish so completely that kión, sillao and cebolla china now sit in ordinary Peruvian domestic kitchens as routine ingredients, not markers of an outside cuisine.

The recipe is Stephanie Pellny's, La Gastronauta, for El Comercio. Menú Perú's, for 6 in 30 minutes, cooks chicken, turkey ham and pork in a pan or wok over a medium heat, makes the egg into a separate omelette cut into squares, and adds the sillao little by little until the rice is evenly coloured. Neither says the rice must be a day old.

What a modern chef changes

A further drying stage, a distinct egg ribbon

Rung 06

Method

1. Dry the cooked rice a further stage beyond an overnight chill, a brief low pass through the dehydrator to pull out the last surface moisture a fridge alone leaves behind.
2. Cook the eggs sous vide to a specific soft-set point first, then cut and fold them through at the very end, rather than scrambling directly in the wok.
3. Toast and grind a small amount of white pepper fresh in the spice grinder rather than using pre-ground, finished over the dish rather than cooked into it.