Bamboo Rice

My mom loved to cook, and everything she made tasted good, but of course, there were a few favorites. One of my younger brother's favorites was bamboo rice. It's a simple dish, but it's so good. I remember when we were kids, my brother who normally only ate a bowl of rice ate 3 or 4 bowls when my mom cooked bamboo rice.

IN JAPANESE: Takenoko Gohan
CATEGORY: Rice/Noodles
COOKING METHOD: Stir-fry
DIFFICULTY: Medium
SERVES: 4 people
LENGTH OF TIME: 45 min

INGREDIENTS:
2 Cups of rice
1/2 lbs of ground beef or pork or chicken
1 can of green bamboo shoots
1/4 carrot or 4 baby carrots chopped thin
3 TBsp soy sauce
2 TBsp sake
1 TBsp mirin
1 TBsp sugar
1/2 tsp dashi powder
1 half inch piece of ginger (see TIP: Ginger)

HOW TO:
Wash 2 cups of rice and set it on your rice cooker with slightly less than regular water measurement. For extra flavor, I add a couple shake of dashi powder to the cooker for this partiuclar dish.

While the rice is being cooked, open up the can of bamboo shoots. You can find these at most Asian groceries, or bigger supermarket on the Asian food isle. There are pre-chopped sliced kinds, but I like getting the whole ones and chop them into chunkier pieces like shown on the photo. Also chop some carrots into thin slices.

Heat up the frying pan, add some oil and cook your choice of ground meat on medium high. While the meat is still half cooked, go ahead and add the carrots and bamboo.

Add sake, soy sauce, mirin, sugar, ginger (shredded) and 1/2 teaspoon of dashi powder and stir well. When everything is mixed (should only take a minute), change the heat to low, and place a lid and let it simmer and have the flavor soak into bamboo and meat for about 5 minutes. Make sure the heat is low enough that all the liquid doesn't dry up.

After about 5 minutes, most of the liquid should be gone (it's ok if there's some, just as long it's not more than 5 TBsp of it.

When the rice is finished cooking, mix all of the bamboo and ground meat mix into the rice and serve!