welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to sunday morning
and the old cookbook show today um we're
going to do another recipe from duncan
hines adventures in good cooking now
duncan hines for those of you that don't
know
was a real person he traveled the united
states and canada by car
uh visiting inns and hotels and
restaurants and then doing these travel
guides and he would recommend places to
stop stay eat things that you needed to
see along the highways of of the united
states and canada and he started this in
the 1930s
and
this one was first published in 1936
adventures in good eating and the
version i have here is from 1942
while he was traveling he collected
recipes that he published in these books
called duncan hines adventures in good
cooking
and these started in 1939
and this version that i have here is
from is from 1953 it is the 24th
printing of this book
and so the recipe i've chosen today
i've chosen not because
it's a great representation of this
particular recipe we're going to do a
fried rice um it's it's not a
it's not a great representation it is a
1940s and 1950s representation of fried
rice we're doing it because
this is a recipe that duncan hines got
from trader vic
at trader vic's restaurant in oakland
california
and the recipe shows up exactly the same
in one of trader vic's tiki cocktail
books
it also has
the same fried rice recipe
written a little bit differently but
same ingredients
almost the same method
and so we're going to start out
it's a very straightforward recipe we're
going to start out now
trader vic
if you're into tiki cocktails you'll
know who trader vic is if you ever
stayed at a hilton hotel
anytime from like 1954 to 1980
you'll have experienced
the trader vic restaurant he licensed
the idea of of his tiki bar
to the hilton uh hotel corporation
and they put them in a lot of the hilton
hotels and it's sort of this um
it's kitschy faux polynesian
with
other asian influences from china and
japan
and the recipes and and the cooking was
asian inspired but definitely formed by
the american experience
this
dish is no different
growing up here in canada
in the 1970s and 1980s any small town
that you went to in canada
had
a restaurant
that sold
chinese canadian food or canadian and
chinese food
didn't matter what it said on the on the
sign you'd go inside and they would have
exactly the same things
all sort of chinese-inspired recipes but
informed by the canadian experience the
united states was no different they had
the same sort of
culture that grew up in small towns
and trader fick
grabbed onto these recipes
and this is what he presented in a lot
of his restaurants in this time period
so i've got these onions in the bottom
of a wok with some oil and i'm just
supposed to sweat them out and soften
them but not brown them now i am using a
wok because i own a walk both recipes
say to just use a frying pan
they don't mention the word walk
1940s early 1950s uh walk wasn't
something that was probably easy to buy
in most parts of north america and most
households
would not have one
in their kitchen now i've got that
softened down next in goes some celery
and mushrooms and i've got more
mushrooms than the recipe calls for i
had some in the fridge
and i had to use them up so
i'm using more than its calls for
executive decision on that one
okay so while it's cooking
let's get the eggs ready so i'm going to
need four eggs beaten and i'll just get
them into this
measuring cup
and
just with a fork
now i know this is the kind of fried
rice recipe that would drive uncle roger
up the wall
um
so be it
i've worked in hong kong i've been to
hong kong probably a dozen times for
work or pleasure
julie and i spent six months on a train
just traveling across china stopping
wherever we wanted and seeing what
happened we've been to japan a few times
we've eaten fried rice
all over asia
i know how it's supposed to be made i
know
sort of what a more traditional style
fried rice is supposed to be
a home style fried rice in a lot of
different cultures that that use rice
and have this basic meal
this isn't that and it really isn't
supposed to be this really is
north american fried rice
straight up straight down north american
fried rice
okay
hit the wrong button on the cooktop i
didn't want to go into power flow
now
it calls for shrimp already cooked
if i was doing a fried rice and i've got
a bunch of fried rice on the channel
i would have
soaked this in a marinade
fried it taken it out and then added it
back later
they're asking for cooked shrimp and in
this time period
it was very common
to boil shrimp
in a pot with water and
either like an old bay seasoning or a
pickling spice
and then using that shrimp
in another dish like this so that's what
i did
i i cooked the shrimp
in a mixture of water and pickling spice
and then drained it
hung onto it and put it into the pan
and so i'm
very cautious right now because i don't
want to overcook the shrimp
and so next in four cups of cooked rice
and so that's rice that i cooked
yesterday um
cooked yesterday i put it out on a sheet
pan to let it
cool down dry off stuck in the fridge
of course
you should follow all of the safety
advisories regarding
how to cool down cooked rice so that you
don't poison yourself
next in that was a bit of salt
three tablespoons of soy sauce and this
is
the only flavoring um
other than
what i cooked the shrimp in
that's not much soy sauce is it
so i'm using
i'm using a kikkoman soy sauce um the
1970s in any way in around toronto it
would have been this china lily soy
sauce is what you would have used
you want something probably pretty bold
because there's not much flavor there at
all
now i've got the heat on sort of a
medium high
they say to keep it on medium or low
so you're not really frying it
all that hard are you
and now we
mix in the egg
and
cook it until the egg is cooked
let me know down in the comments if you
ever ate at a trader vic's in the heyday
of trader vic's they went away for a
while
most of them closed they disappeared
and then sometime in the early 2000s
they started showing up again
people got interested in tiki tiki
cocktails tiki culture again and they
started popping up
i mean at one time this was wildly
wildly wildly sought after
people loved it
i don't know
we'll see what julie
says hey jules hey glenn hey friends
that looks pretty good
in keeping with 1943
a overcooked rice
recipe yes and we'll and we'll eat it
with forks so
this recipe comes from
the duncan heinz cookbook
by way of trader vic's but it's also in
the trader vic's cookbook okay does
trader vic
say it's from duncan heinz no duncan
hein says it's from trade so
is on his road trip says it's from
trader vic's it's also a trader vic so
this is something that you this is
something that you would have eaten in
the 1940s
at the uh at the tiki bar trader tiki
bar
yeah i can see that yeah very classic
flavor
it's that classic
small town
chinese canadian restaurant
you could have got this in elm ville or
collingwood or peterborough
or big river or big river
thunder bay
all of those towns
and so this is not out of place
in the experience of the 1940s 50s 60s
you know into the 70s
it's almost gone though sadly
replaced by
a modern version a modern yeah sorry i
spoke with my mouth a modern version
yeah yeah but you know
it still tastes right it's rice it's you
know
there's no bold flavor
a little bit of the soy sauce flavor
that's it yeah that is the only flavor
yep right it comes from that same here's
your
steam here's your here's your rice and
you just put you put some sauce on it
yeah like that's kind of the life i
lived for a long time as a little kid so
i mean
a representation of the past
i still kind of enjoy it
because it's just it's
it's just comforting not challenging
it's something that you just eat and you
enjoy
and i still want to be
enjoying it you don't need to make it
complicated and
you don't need to be judgmental about it
no no right you you make it you eat it
you love it
that's it
it's simple it's enjoyable
comes together really quickly you don't
have to fuss about it
it's kind of stuck in the past but it's
still good thanks for stopping by see
you again soon
as i continue to shovel and shovel
before you could get snap peas and all
that kind of stuff yeah yeah