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SUDOKU
WHISPER
“More sun
please.”
“I like the
chonky
squirrels!!!”
WHISPER
Wednesday, February 8, 2023 — 3
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
The paper takeout pail: the
compact, usable, portable rom-
com–iconic vessel for rice. You
open the metal purse handle-
like top and a plume of smoke
steams out from the origami
folds, revealing a poof of palate-
cleansing flavor and soft white
morsels.
Takeout restaurants every-
where deliver rice, and only
steamed rice, in a folded paper
box, often featuring a red pago-
da and a “thank you.” The box
makes it easy to dig in with
chopsticks or smoothly slip a
puff of rice onto a plate to soak
up the rich flavors of a main
dish (this week, No Thai! green
curry). Fresh white rice can
also slide from its container to
serve as a canvas for toppings
from around the world: beans,
dill, tomato and onion, sweet
coconut milk and daal. And,
though delicious alone, com-
forting, mild and filled with
feel-good carbs, white rice left-
overs lie lonely in the white box
in the back of the fridge.
You forget the underrated
(yet irreplaceable) dish as it
solidifies into a grainy block,
wasting money and food. But
if you fry it up, you can create
a special single-pan meal that is
brand new every time.
Fried fresh white rice turns
to mush. But when chilled, rice
starches undergo a firming pro-
cess called retrogradation. Fry-
ing chilled rice creates firmer,
crispy morsels that are dry
enough to soak in a delicious
egg. The egg plumps the grains
and crisps the dish on the sides
of the pan.
Eggs, a golden ingredient and
critical “cheap” protein, face an
ongoing shortage and soaring
prices. Yet, as is typical in the
pitfalls of a college kitchen, we
waste precious money on favor-
ite ingredients that we forget to
use. Especially now, when they
are at their most scarce and
treasured, we should use eggs
to reinvigorate the underap-
preciated golden ingredient of
leftover rice.
The earliest days of eggy
fried rice were in Emperor
Yang’s ancient Sui Dynasty
kitchen. The newly populated
city of Yangzhou, China, crowd-
ed with recent immigrants,
quickly caught on to redeeming
the hardening staple starch, so
as not to waste precious ingre-
dients and to combine many fla-
vors into a single dish.
Fried rice quickly caught on
in Asian American restaurants,
suiting the American-assimilat-
ed cuisine with salty, craveable
flavor. And when Americans
got plain white rice from their
favorite restaurants, fried rice
became a staple leftover.
Since most college students
can’t fit a wok in a micro-kitch-
en’s false wood cabinets, a fried
rice feast is unfeasible. The
countless ingredients, from the
traditional additions of scallops
or sausage to American takeout
peas and corn, can hardly fit in
a small frying pan. So I “rec-
reated” a base for an untradi-
tional, soft yet crisped leftover
delicacy.
Ingredients
1
cup
days-old
chilled
steamed white rice
1-2 eggs (if you’re feeling
rich)
1 dash neutral oil or cooking
spray
½ tsp garlic powder
1 ½ tbsp soy sauce or tamari
½ tsp sesame oil or sesame-
based marinade
½ tbsp chili-based hot sauce
½ tsp sweetener of choice
½ tsp acid: lemon or rice vin-
egar
¼ tsp ground ginger
Instructions
Put neutral oil in the pan and
scramble 2 eggs with ½ tbsp
soy sauce and ½ tsp garlic, fry
at medium heat until eggs are
just raw on the top.
Put rice into the pan with
a dash more oil and scramble
ingredients
together,
letting
rice clump
Whisk together remaining
ingredients and spices into a
sauce.
After 1 minute, pour the
sauce all over the eggy rice.
Reduce heat slightly and stir
in the rice, let it fry for a few
minutes.
Serve topped with your favor-
ite vegetables or condiments.
Ingredient Column: The forgotten, cold, leftover
takeout white rice
Breaking down this year’s
Oscar nominations
The final stretch of awards
season is upon us as the Oscar
nominations were announced
last week. It’s a surprisingly
good crop of nominees given
the Oscars’ history of reward-
ing mediocre to straight-up bad
movies. The Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences seems
to have found the right balance
of critical and commercial hits to
recognize. Here is a breakdown
of the major categories and some
of the trends and narratives sur-
rounding them:
Best Picture
The Best Picture nominations
this year were fairly predict-
able — Gold Derby correctly pre-
dicted nine of the 10, only “The
Whale” missing out in favor of
Palme d’Or winner “Triangle of
Sadness” — but it struck a bal-
ance of prestige and blockbust-
er that allows the Academy to
both maintain its standing as a
respectable awards body and bol-
ster television viewership. Among
the nominees are festival hits like
the aforementioned “Triangle of
Sadness,” Venice Film Festival
debutants “Tár” and “The Ban-
shees of Inisherin,” and Toron-
to International Film Festival
People’s Choice Award winner,
“The Fabelmans,” and runner-up,
“Women Talking.” The Academy
also nominated the two most suc-
cessful films of the year — “Ava-
tar: The Way of Water” and “Top
Gun: Maverick” and smaller hits
“Elvis” and “Everything Every-
where All At Once.” The Netflix
adaptation of “All Quiet on the
Western Front” rounds out the
group of 10 after a big showing at
the BAFTAs where it picked up 14
nominations.
This race should come down
to three films: “EEAAO” is the
current favorite — garnering 11
nominations, the most of any film
this year, and doing well on the
awards circuit so far. “Banshees”
is also a contender, reaching a
much wider audience after com-
ing to HBO Max and receiving
much acclaim. “The Fabelmans”
could take the “CODA” path to
victory, taking advantage of the
ranked-choice voting system as a
film universally liked.
Best Director
Whether Best Picture and Best
Director go to the same film is a
toss-up. “Parasite” and “Nomad-
land” each won both awards in
2020 and 2021, but director Sian
Heder (“CODA”) wasn’t even
nominated last year for her Best
Picture-winning film. It’s gen-
erally a good bet that the Best
Picture winner will at least be
nominated for Best Director,
which means “The Banshees
of Inisherin,” “EEAAO,” “The
Fabelmans,” “Tár” or “Triangle
of Sadness” will likely take home
the top prize. The nominations in
this category went almost com-
pletely as expected, apart from
the shocking inclusion of Ruben
Ӧstlund for “Triangle of Sad-
ness.” Going into the nomination
announcement, Ӧstlund was the
13th favorite to win the award,
but he surged forward to steal the
final slot away from more likely
nominees Edward Berger (“All
Quiet on the Western Front”),
James Cameron (“Avatar: The
Way of Water”) and Sarah Polley
(“Women Talking”). The Dan-
iels are currently favored to take
home both Best Director and
Best Picture for “EEAAO,” but
don’t be surprised if Steven Spiel-
berg takes this one. He has equal
odds as it stands and is looking to
take home his first Best Director
Oscar since 1998. It would give
the Academy yet another oppor-
tunity to honor Spielberg for his
personal, self-reflective master-
piece, “The Fabelmans.”
Best Actor
The Best Actor nominations
went chalk this year; all five
actors with the best odds via
Gold Derby were nominated. Paul
Mescal’s nomination for his raw,
touching performance in “After-
sun” is a wonderful surprise since
the only potentially close replace-
ment was Tom Cruise, who failed
to secure a nomination for his
fine but empty movie star acting
in “Top Gun: Maverick.” How-
ever, for a while now, this cat-
egory has been a three-horse race
between Austin Butler (“Elvis”),
Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of
Inisherin”) and Brendan Fraser
(“The Whale”).
Fraser is currently the favor-
ite for giving his all in one of the
worst movies of the year. Butler
is pulling a Rami Malek (“Bohe-
mian Rhapsody”), keeping him-
self in the race by portraying an
American icon. But Farrell gives
by far the best performance of
the three. He takes McDonagh’s
remarkably complex script and
bounces quickly and with great
aplomb between comic and trag-
ic tones. Farrell winning would
mean the Oscars finally getting
the lead actor category right,
which means they’ll definitely
give it to Butler.
Best Actress
This race is between two
actresses: Cate Blanchett for her
powerful performance in “Tár”
and Michelle Yeoh for her excit-
ing and poignant performance
in “EEAAO.” But the interest-
ing story in the Best Actress cat-
egory is where the hell Andrea
Riseborough came from with her
performance in “To Leslie?” Her
nomination wasn’t out of nowhere
— she had the seventh-best odds
on Gold Derby. Nor was it unde-
serving — the buzz from “To
Leslie” viewers suggests Risebor-
ough is fantastic in the film. But
the sudden influx of passion and
campaigning on her behalf was
shocking because hardly anyone
saw this movie. “To Leslie” made
$27,000 at the box office and is
currently only available to rent
online in the U.S. There has been
almost no marketing for this film
— I vaguely remember a trailer for
a single screening at the Michi-
gan Theater last fall. But a strong,
grassroots push by famous actors
like Gwyneth Paltrow and Mia
Farrow, manifested an Oscar
nomination
for
Riseborough.
This campaign’s success was so
bizarre that the Academy investi-
gated whether or not it broke any
rules, which could potentially
have meant taking the nomina-
tion back, although there was
eventually no wrongdoing found.
It’s an absurd situation, but in
terms of the awards, it doesn’t
matter much because there is no
way she (or anyone who would
have taken her place) will beat
Blanchett or Yeoh.
Best Supporting Actor
This category was all over the
place. Everyone expected Paul
Dano to get the nomination for
Burt Fabelman in “The Fabel-
mans,” but it was Judd Hirsch
who got the nod with his power-
ful, six-minute cameo as Uncle
Boris. Brian Tyree Henry also
came out of nowhere with a nomi-
nation for “Causeway,” the film’s
only nomination. His intimate,
emotional performance seemed
to have struck a chord with vot-
ers. “The Banshees of Inisherin”
also came in with nominations
for Brendan Gleeson and Barry
Keoghan, both worthy of every
bit of praise they have received
for their touching and funny
performances. This category’s
major narrative is the wonderful
comeback story of Ke Huy Quan,
who quit acting for decades after
struggling to find work, but who
gives an exciting, heartfelt per-
formance in “EEAAO.” The Oscar
will almost certainly go to Quan,
as he has been winning at nearly
every awards ceremony so far.
Design by Leilani Baylis-Washington and Abby Schreck
Design by Emily Schwartz
MITCHEL GREEN
Daily Arts Writer
KAYA GINSKY
Senior Arts Editor
Read more at MichiganDaily.com