Fate/stay night / First Impressions

「遠坂 の 五目ご飯」 (Tohsaka no Gomoku Fried Rice)
“Tohsaka’s Gomoku Fried Rice”

August has just begun, and it’s Rin’s time to shine the brightest during this eighth installment of Emiya-san Chi no Kyou no Gohan. As the series gives us ample opportunity to get to know and understand characters beyond our initial impression of them during the series, this episode explores how Rin operates as a host, a chef, and a teacher. Food is plentiful at the Tohsaka residence, offering Rin a creative outlet to practice her expertise: Chinese cuisine. Her preferred dish of choice is Fried Rice, which is simple to make yet tricky to master. With Rin’s know-how on perfecting fried rice to the point of knowing how to toss it in the air like restaurant chefs, it shows how her ventures in cooking go beyond eating at Emiya’s residence. Whereas Emiya has to begrudgingly take the back-seat for cooking and opts to keep himself occupied with cleaning, Rin’s full dedication to cooking this month’s recipe gave us a nice surprise while she takes on the responsibility of assembling fried rice.

The most pivotal role she plays in the episode, however, is the role of a teacher for Sakura to get her better acquainted with Chinese cooking. Because the visual novel keeps an air of secrecy around the relationship between Sakura and the Tohsaka family by making it a big reveal, it’s a pleasant treat to see a spin-off like this one where Rin and Sakura can mingle further. Whereas other episodes had only showed them hanging out together, this is one of the main instances of the two sharing a sisterly bond as Sakura happily takes in the lessons Rin shows her in how to assemble a dinner for everyone. It was really nice to see how much of a role Rin plays in getting Sakura more familiar with cooking by letting her take the wheel and help her get everything together to cook.

For the month of August, the item on Emiya’s menu is…

Tohsaka’s Gomoku Fried Rice:

What You’ll Need:

– Roasted pork
– Carrots
– Kamaboko
– Leeks
– Green Peppers
– Cooked rice
– Eggs
– Salt
– Pepper
– Japanese sake
– Soy sauce

Steps:

– Chop up Roasted pork, Carrots, Kamaboko, Leeks, Green Peppers into small pieces about the size of a grain of rice.

– Heat up the frying pan with cooking oil, stir fry the carrots first, and then mix together the Kamaboko, Leeks, and Green Peppers once the carrots are half-way cooked. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

– Whisk together eggs in a separate bowl and pour into a pan on medium high heat. Scramble well to get small pieces of scrambled egg.

– While the eggs are still half-cooked, stir in the cooked rice as if slicing the rice in half with the mixing spoon.

– Add in the cooked chopped ingredients alongside the leeks and season with salt, pepper, and sake.

* Because home kitchen ovens don’t have industrial grade heat, you have to make sure to stir your rice on a hot pan directly with a mixing spoon/spatula without lifting the pan. Flipping rice into the air is fun, but not something that can be frequently done on a home range when the pan can risk getting cold enough for the rice to stick together.

– Mix in a dash of soy sauce, and you’re ready to set it up along with side items of your choice.

13 Comments

  1. Also be careful not to smash to hard the pan back on the surface of the oven, when you try to flip the rice.. even if it resists heat, an strong smash can break it…

    Worldwidedepp
    Reply

  2. Roasted pork? Not really, Tohsaka describes it as “char siu”, Chinese-style barbecued pork. And putting surimi in the dish? You should use shrimp or even crab instead if you can afford it.

    Most importantly, though, be very careful with reheated rice dishes because of the risk of food poisoning from bacillus cereus. Even cooking at high temperatures won’t destroy the bacterial toxins, so it’s vital that the rice is cooled quickly after it has been cooked the first time.

    Angelus
    Reply

  3. I can’t help but think about some person crawling out from under a rock, starting to watch and like this show, finding out there is more of it out there and getting Heaven’s Feel because it is the newest.

    Magewolf
    Reply

  4. …the FEELING you get when you dont want to watch an episode of a cook-centric show because the dish made in said episode does not excite you…….*sad face*

    BROOKLYN otaku
    Reply

  8. I love that Rin can open an egg one handed which is an advanced technique that you have to fail at a bit to get it down. Again showing cooking is something Rin likes to do compared to dusting.

    It to bad Shiro did not open the do not open chest. If he did Ruby would come out and we would get Magical Girl Rin. I can never get over in a way that makes me smile that grimdark Fate has powerful magical girls.

    RedRocket
    Reply

  10. While it’s not exactly the same as the fried rice I ate with Hamburg steak when I visited Odaiba, I do eat a variant of Rin’s fried rice dish whenever I feel like eating at a certain Chinese-style fastfood chain in my neck of the woods. (It’s probably not as good as Rin’s dish, though…)

    Also, I’ve posted food pics from my Japan trip on Imgur (topic-relevant posts below):
    – Fried rice (with Hamburg steak).
    – The “accompanying” Hamburg steak.
    – Bonus pic.

    Call it an appetizer (pun intended) for the rest of my Japan trip pics I’ll be posting there later on.

    Incognito
    Reply

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