Bella Milroy: Michel’s Fried Rice

Sick Day Banquet

Image description: a digital photograph in portrait which shows a blur of different colours; greens, orange, yellows, browns and blacks. Though the image is blurred, there is depth to it, with a surface of what appears to be some kind of transparent glass with blotches of condensation on it. It isn’t clear what the colours are, but some of the shapes appear as spheres of green and cubes of orange. The liquid magnifies some of the colours and shapes below it, making it very watery and abstract. The scale of the image is unclear, but the combination of textures allow for a dreamy, hazy scene.
Image description: A digital photograph of a grey ceramic bowl of what looks like rice, vegetables and pieces of scrambled eggs sat on a lit, pale wooden surface. The rice is presented in a stylised way where it has been moulded into a dome. This presentation makes it very appetizing, giving it a feeling like it perhaps belongs in a restaurant or posted on instagram. It is still a very humble looking bowl of rice, and the image makes you want to eat it – it looks yummy.

Since I began food writing, I have swayed many times to a particular favourite meal of comfort, safety, nostalgia; Derbyshire Oatcakes. They are this wonderfully stodgy , deeply comforting food that I grew up eating. They’re essentially like a crumpet but flat and in the shape of a pancake. They are totally delicious grilled with cheese, can be used as the base of a fry up and can even be topped with butter and jam. I would eat them for breakfast as a weekend treat, as a fryup for tea, and always on family holidays to Wales, enjoying them alongside other novelty vacation staples of fancy orange juice and cereal variety packs. They are delicious, I love them and they bring me deep deep joy to eat them whenever I’m in need of such comforts. And, in thinking about writing this piece, I have often tried to evoke the feeling when I eat this food, particularly when I eat this food when I’m unwell. But what can happen with that is that I can often fall down the nostalgia-vortex of what this food means to me, particularly given that it’s a special food that is unique to my local area (you could go across the border and find Staffordshire Oatcakes in the neighbouring country, which are, supposedly, just as good). 

Alongside Derbyshire Oatcakes, the foods that I most crave when I am unwell are savoury, bland foods like plain tortilla chips or soy rice crackers. These are the kinds of foods which really allow me to quash some of the nausea that I experience when pain is high. Something that always fulfills this criteria is a kind of barely-cheese-on-toast prepared by my Dad. When I’m in a lot of pain and all my senses are extremely flared, it means that I can only manage very small amounts of dry textures with flavours to match. So sometimes my dad will make me cheese on toast with just a scarcity of cheese, almost as if the toast and cheese have merely waved and said hello to one another in the briefest of introductions. To some this perhaps sounds like a grim, flavourless piece of edible two-by-four, but when you’re in a lot of pain, sometimes this is all it takes to really hit the spot. 

Continuing the theme of gentle, savoury flavours, a benchmark of sick-day foods for a long time has been scrambled eggs on toast. I love them so very much. They have that lovely blandness to them, but also the nourishing goodness of the buttery toast alongside fluffy eggs, which I insist on having covered with a heavy scattering of salt. The eggs have to be silky and runny, almost like a quiche. I don’t like any pepper in it at all, just lots of salt, lots of butter. That, for me, is what makes good scrambled eggs. 

Image Description: A digital photograph of a blue and white ceramic bowl of what looks like some kind of shiny orange liquid. It looks like the liquid could be eggs, as it is being whisked using chopsticks. There is movement and motion to the image, as the chopsticks are slightly blurred. It looks like the bowl is being held on a kitchen countertop, with a red chopping board in the background. The hands holding the bowl have white skin. The image is lively and interesting, with the shapes of the moving liquid caught in a way that makes them look silky and bright.

But something has changed in my life over the last few weeks which has made me think about the food that I eat in a way that I haven’t really experienced before. Back in November 2020, I took on a PA (Personal Assistant or Carer) for the first time. My experience of illness has solely been supported by loved ones and family members, and so my care has always come from that. Over the course of last year as my health spiralled badly, and alongside the strain of pandemic, the care I received from my partner and my parents had become increasingly complex and wearing. I have an incredibly good setup with my family, and the care that I receive from them often is intermingled with leisurely family time, something I always feel very privileged to have in this way. The difficulty about care coming from loved ones in my particular context, is that you don’t get to objectively assess what is happening and what is going on. It’s something that a friend of mine was describing to me as to why they don’t have care from their family in how both parties compromise too much; the carer is knackered and tired, and you, the person being cared for, asks for less because of that. It’s taken me until very recently to realise that that is what has been going on for me for some time now. It’s hard not to feel like every ask is an I.O.U, something that really eats into your agency of asking for what you really want. And these things stack up, becoming small resentments over seemingly unimportant tasks like how you like your washing to be hung, where that mug goes in the kitchen or “…I asked for brown toast, not white!”. It’s also where my internalised ableism harbours in its most steadfast setting, feeding the part of me that feels heavy and burdensome, a place where I often transform into the albatross around the necks of the people I love. The reality of this care has always been in the back of my mind, particularly as my parents get older. I wanted to preempt the moment where we’re all running around like headless chickens when mum has had a fall or dad has gotten sick, and the care isn’t there on either side and things turn quite bad, quite quickly. I also wanted to gain a different perspective and maybe a better sense of agency over how my care is carried out, allowing me to consider what it can offer me in a way that perhaps I hadn’t done before. This new venture has been both incredibly challenging and wonderfully transformative to embark upon. I am entering into a completely new stage of my disabled experience, and it is thrilling. 

One of the things that is a really interesting example of this new way of operating is the food that I am eating. There has been the discovery of a new found favourite sick day food; Michel’s fried rice. My PA Michel is a wonderful cook of Japanese food having lived there for most of her life, and so when she told me that she made good fried rice I was very excited. And so, after many a sick-day of eating scrambled eggs or the corner of buttered toast, on a poorly day recently, all of a sudden the food I craved was Michel’s fried rice, and it did not disappoint; offering up the most delicious, savoury, perfectly greasy bowl to my tired mouth. It was cooked in a way I never would have cooked myself, with chopsticks to whisk the eggs and stock powder sprinkled over the wok full of delicately chopped greens, onions and just a scatter of frozen peas. It was a creation of careful, generous support, fulfilling that desire of taste, texture and comfort that I so desperately need in those moments. 

When the food that we need to comfort us is being cooked by someone else, there’s this really interesting dynamic that plays out between what I need and what I desire. It requires you to find that meeting point between those two things, considering what is important, what is achievable, what is meaningful and what is practical. As artist Kyla Harris described to me in our voice note exchange (as featured in the Sick Day Banquet film as part of this 2021 Soft Sanctuary series), “so often working with a PA is about figuring out their strengths and playing to them”. Perhaps scrambled eggs are not going to be the thing that I request as my go-to meal from my PA, particularly in this delicious discovery of her fried rice. Sometimes the food you desire is not always the food you think of first, but it’s the food that the person who is cooking for you is most equipped at putting together. It’s as if they take your needs for something savoury and bland with steady texture, and mould it into their version of that. There is something really exciting about the way in which you can discover those kinds of comforts in another translation, something that I feel I’m experiencing all the time with this new formal PA setup. This is not just happening with the food I eat, but also in how my bed is made, in the cleanliness of my home, and the voluptuousness of my regularly clean hair – a novelty I have not experienced on a regular basis for many years. 

Needing care is extremely complicated; having care is even more so. There are your own needs and desires, there are the people offering to facilitate that, and there is the meeting point in between; a space full of complex compromise, shared wisdom, and an often quite bumpy terrain in which we navigate how those needs and desires are met. I am extremely excited to try and realise those desires and bring them to life in ways that I hadn’t considered before. Right now, my sick-day food is Michel’s fried rice, and within that exchange of flavours, smells, comforts and support, I can begin to hear my voice speaking louder about what I need, what I want, and what makes me feel full; mind, body and soul.

Michel’s Egg Fried Rice 

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup of rice plus one cup of water 
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and diced
Half a carrot, peeled and diced
Half an onion, diced (I use frozen supermarket pre-chopped which work very well)
Two eggs, whisked 
Half a cup of frozen peas
2 teaspoons of vegetable stock (i use bouillon stock powder but you could use half of any stock cube crumbled up) 
Half a teaspoon of chilli flakes
1-2 tablespoons of soy sauce
2-3 tablespoons of olive oil (for frying)

Optional additionals: 

Mushrooms
Kale
green pepper
Leek
marinated tofu pieces

Method:

Pour the rice into a pan and put on the boil. Once the pan has reached a boil, turn the heat right down to low for about 15 to 20 minutes so it seems – you shouldn’t need to drain the rice. 

Chop all the vegetables and set aside.

Whisk the eggs in a bowl

Heat a large frying pan on high. Once hot, add a glug of oil.

Pour the whisked eggs into a frying pan and scramble until they are soft, golden pieces. Once cooked, set aside. 

Using a piece of kitchen towel, wipe out the egg from the empty frying pan so any remaining bits of egg don’t burn in the next step. 

Put the pan back on the medium-high heat. Once hot, pour another glug of oil into the pan.

Add the diced onions, carrots and garlic (and any other vegetables youve chosen) and stir fry. 

Turn the heat right down and cover the pan with a lid for about five minutes to give the vegetables time to soften and sweat. 

Once you’ve sweated the vegetables and they are tender and soft, add the peas and cover with a lid again for another five minutes, with the heat still on low. 

Check the rice to make sure it’s not catching at the bottom. If it still needs a little more time but is looking a little dry, add a splash more water to allow it to steam. Once it is cooked, leave in the pan and set aside.

Once this is done, sprinkle in a teaspoon of the stock (the rest will be added to the rice separately) and stir. 

Season to taste with black pepper and chilli flakes. Cook for a further 3 to 4 minutes with the lid off on low, stirring frequently.

Add the cooked scrambled eggs to the pan and stir, then remove from the pan and set aside.

Add a touch more oil to the empty pan and add the cooked rice.

Turn the heat up but be careful not to burn the bottom.

Add the remaining teaspoon of stock and more pepper and chilli flakes (optional). Stirring frequently, the pan should be sizzling.

Drizzle in a glug of soy sauce. Stir for a further 2-3 minutes.

Add the fried vegetables and eggs back into the pan with the rice, and stir fry for about 2 more minutes to heat through. 

Add another glug of soy sauce to taste.

Enjoy in warmed bowls as a side or main, for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Image description: a digital photograph in portrait which shows a blur of different colours; greens, orange, yellows, browns and blacks. Though the image is blurred, there is depth to it, with a surface of what appears to be some kind of transparent glass with blotches of condensation on it. It isn’t clear what the colours are, but some of the shapes appear as spheres of green and cubes of orange. The liquid magnifies some of the colours and shapes below it, making it very watery and abstract. The scale of the image is unclear, but the combination of textures allow for a dreamy, hazey scene.
Audio description: Bella Milroy: Michel’s Fried Rice