roast rice pizza

On a not so recent episode of Happy Together 3 and their 'Late Night Snack Shop' segment, Lee Jung Yong's rice pizza was registered as the 7th dish on the menu. The main point of this dish was the use of leftovers. There was a really good response from the main MCs upon trying the pizza so I decided to recreate it!

rice pizza:

All the ingredients are meant to be vegetables and meat that have been leftover from the night before. My ingredients aren't really leftovers but they're extra vegetables and meat that are hogging valuable fridge space at the moment.

toppings:

The original rice pizza made by Lee Jung Yong was topped with tofu, tomato, peppers, ham, onion, kimchi, ketchup and mozzarella cheese. Another appealing point of this dish is that you don't need an oven - just a frying pan!

ingredients for the base:

stir-fried vegetables:

For my pizza I used button mushrooms, broccoli, diced red capsicum and onion. With no oil, I cooked the button mushrooms first to get rid of the water that would normally ooze out. When slightly brown, I removed it from the pan, set it aside on another plate and started stir-frying the onions and broccoli. When the onions begin to turn transparent, I added the capsicum and stirred it in the pan until the broccoli looked cooked. I sprinkled a pinch of salt over the vegetables, threw the mushrooms back in and combined everything.

stir-fried lamb:

For the meat, I used very thinly sliced lamb which was leftover from our hot pot meal from last night. I thought it might have been bland to just eat it as it is so I seasoned it with some sugar, the smallest drop of dark soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil. To cook it, I poured a little bit of oil into a heated pan and placed a garlic clove's amount of diced garlic into the pan. When the garlic turned golden, I placed the lamb slices into the pan and stirred it around until it was cooked.

While frying the vegetables and meat, I made the rice base in a separate pan on medium low heat.

rice base:

recipe: roast rice pizza by lee jung yong

what you'll need:

for the toppings:

about 1/2 - 3/4 cup of leftover vegetables 

1/4 cup of leftover meat 

mozzarella cheese

tomato sauce or your preferred pizza sauce

for the rice base:

1- 1/2 small bowls of leftover rice (cold or slightly warm)

1 small egg

a pinch of salt

cooking oil 

what to do:

1. On a non-stick pan, pour enough oil so it coats the bottom of the pan and turn the heat up to medium - high.
2. In a small bowl, mix the egg, a pinch of salt and the rice together until consistent.
3. Pour the rice mixture into the pan and press is down until flat and forms a nice solid and compact rice cake. Make sure it's not too thin (may break very easily) or not too thick (might not turn crisp). Then turn the heat down to medium.
4. While one side of the rice is cooking, you can begin to heat up your vegetables and meat or just toss is around lightly in a separate pan. 
5. Check to see if the underneath is a golden brown colour. If it is, flip the rice cake over and roast the other side till crisp. If it hasn't turned golden brown, give it a few more minutes. Flipping should be easy since the rice cake should be solid. 
6. Once the rice cake has flipped, cover the already-cooked side with a layer of tomato sauce or any other sauce of your choice. Next, top with the mixed vegetables and meat. Finally, generously sprinkle shredded mozzarella cheese over your toppings and place a lid over the pan so the cheese can melt more quickly. 
7. This is optional but if you want it to be slightly spicy, sprinkle some hot chilli flakes over the cheese and some ground pepper. 
8. When the cheese has completed melted and the bottom of the rice cake has turned crisp, (you can tell by the edges, it should turn dark brown) it's done and you're ready to dig in!

roast rice pizza:

The dish actually turned out better than I expected. I thought the crust would taste really strange, but it's just super crisp and nice. My younger cousins, who refuse to eat rice, also gobbled it up and so now I'm a happy chappy with an emptier fridge.