Instructions: Heat oil. Stir-fry rice. Add chicken, onion, celery, bell pepper, garlic. Stir-fry until well blended. Stir in beaten eggs and soy sauce. Serve while hot.

This recipe yields 4 servings.

Comments: It would be hard to imagine Japanese cooking without rice (gohanmono). In fact, it would be downright impossible, for the two are linked even more tightly than Italian cooking and pasta. So vital is rice to the Japanese diet that the word for rice, "gohan," also means "meal." And that "meal" is not quite like the rice eaten in the West. For while Americans prefer long-grained rice, Japanese lean strongly towards short-grained, rather stubby rice, that emerges from the rice cooker in a slightly sticky state - the better for the making of sushi.

There isnt a meal during the Japanese day that isnt accompanied by rice; its eaten for breakfast, and its eaten for dessert. Its carried about rolled in balls as a snack. And its always finished, every grain; wasting rice is considered to be very bad form in Japan.

Many Japanese cooks simply use a rice cooker, a basic electric kitchen device into which you pour rice and water, close the top, turn it on, and about half an hour later, youve got a potful of perfect rice. Just like that.

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