Yet his fried rice also tastes like home, outer layers hiding a deceptive simplicity at the center. Just like a person, fried rice has many sides, as many as the grains that make it up. My mother’s fried rice exudes a simpler aroma, less overpowering, more nuanced. The flavor is simple, with a small taste of the sea, for her homeland. The flavor is closer to the original rice, less exotic, more down-to-earth, seeking not to impress, but to capture the basis of the ingredients and use them to tell the story. Recently I have been thinking about what kind of fried rice I will make. Perhaps it would be an amalgamation of everything I have known and loved. Even so, I think that I will add a little something different. Maybe a little spice, some curry powder, the chili peppers vibrant, but not scorching my tongue. I want to add something of all the places I’ve traveled to, but leave a little room for my origins, and my future. The best of Houston, the blend of sizzling oil and seafood. The delicate gardens of Suzhou, a backdrop to the smell of the air, breakfast cooking in one thousand streetside stalls. And to tie all the flavors together, a touch of the earthy, simple flavor of Indiana that I’ve slowly warmed to over the past five years. Fried rice has grown up with me, and it will continue to change throughout my lifetime. The best part is that for each day, there is a new bowl and a new journey to a different place. I smile as my chopsticks dig into another steaming bowl of fried rice, golden rich, soothing aroma catching at my nostrils and gently stimulating my appetite. I feel myself dissolving, melding with the taste into the fried rice, reflected in the oil droplets on every single grain. My tastes have changed, yet the fried rice has changed too, shifting its versatile boundaries to match mine. I wait for a moment in anticipation, pausing before turning the pages on this new adventure, this time completely fused into my own creation. I can catch a touch of everything I added, wrapped up in the classic flavors of soy sauce, jasmine rice, and oil. I sigh in pleasure inside as the first bite rests on my tongue for a moment, blending, before disappearing.
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