A few years ago, traveling in Scotland with my friend Christy, we were deciding what to do with a bag of rice and some eggs in our youth hostel kitchen. She told me about a dish she’d learned from a Japanese friend of hers, and it’s become one of my staple foods – not because it’s the most gourmet dish I can make, but because it’s simple, satisfying, and quick.
That dish is called tamago bukkake gohan (“egg-splattered rice”), or sometimes just tamago gohan (“egg rice”). There are multiple variants on the dish, but this is the salmonella-minimizing one. The result is a delicious mixture, moist and fragrant with the rice and delicate egg. It’s the perfect fast breakfast, if you make extra rice in the evenings to save for it, and aside from the egg’s inherent cholesterol, it’s quite healthy.
Also, it has the best name ever.
Tamago Bukkake Gohan
(serves one)
1) Reheat a bowl of rice, or spoon out a bowl of hot rice. * Make sure that it’s so hot that you can’t touch it for more than a second or two.
2) Wash an egg thoroughly, then crack it into the bowl. Mix well with the rice.
3) Add soy sauce, salt, and/or pepper to taste. Enjoy! **
* – One of these days, I’ll post about how to make good rice, which is an art form that I still haven’t fully mastered.
** – The chances of a given egg having salmonella at all are miniscule, and the hot rice should kill it; unless you have a weakened immune system, this dish is quite safe. However, if the idea of still-damp egg scares you, you can pop the bowl of rice in the microwave until it solidifies into a scrambled-egg texture.
sounds good