Shanghai Cai Fan (上海菜飯)

Hello world! :) Starting off this blog with a dish I’d always wanted to make—cai fan or vegetable rice. It’s literally just rice, salted pork and vegetables, but when I first had it at Chef Zhao, I felt like my mind was being blown. Now that I’m WFH for a month, I finally got a chance to recreate it—and I’m not sure why I waited so long, because it was so easy to make. So good :’)

(original recipe from Noms ‘n Bites)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups rice, rinsed
• 3.5-4 cups chicken broth
• 4-5 inches salted pork, diced
• 2 large heads of baby bok choy, chopped (separate the stems from the leaves)
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed

Instructions:

1. In a medium bowl, wash and drain the rice.
2. In a saucepan, heat the chicken broth until it boils, then turn off the heat (or, if using chicken broth powder, boil 4 cups of water and add 4 tsp. broth powder).
3. In a large pot (claypot or Dutch oven; I used a Korean soup pot), saute the salted pork until browned and fat is rendered. Drain excess fat.
4. Saute the garlic until browned.
5. Saute the bok choy stems, then saute one half of the leafy parts.
6. Add the rinsed rice, making sure each grain is coated in oil.
7. Add chicken broth until the rice is just covered (around 3.5 cups).
8. Wait until broth boils, then cover with a lid and cook (medium-high) for 15 minutes.
9. Add the rest of the leafy parts of the bok choy.
10. Cover again and let sit for ~5 minutes.
11. Enjoy! :)