Tamago Kake Gohan

Ingredients

• 400g freshly cooked hot short-grain rice
• 2 very fresh eggs, at room temperature
• 2 tsp soy sauce, or dashi shoyu
• 1 spring onion
• 1 sheet toasted nori
• 1/2 tsp toasted sesame seeds
• A pinch of shichimi togarashi, optional
• 1 tsp katsuobushi, optional

Before you cook

• Take the eggs out of the fridge 20 minutes ahead so they are not fridge-cold, since cold eggs cool the rice too fast.
• Slice the spring onion very thinly.
• Tear or snip the nori into small shreds.
• Cook the rice, or reheat it until it is genuinely steaming hot, because lukewarm rice makes the egg slimy rather than creamy.

Steps

1. Fill two bowls with the hot rice, mounding it slightly rather than pressing it down.
2. Make a shallow well in the centre of each mound with the back of a spoon.
3. Separate one egg, dropping the white into a small bowl and setting the yolk aside in its shell half.
4. Beat the white on its own for 20 seconds until it is loose and foamy, which stops it going stringy in the rice.
5. Pour the beaten white into the well of one rice bowl and stir it briskly through the rice for 15 seconds until the grains turn glossy and pale.
6. Set the reserved yolk on top of the stirred rice.
7. Repeat the separating, beating and stirring for the second bowl.
8. Drizzle a teaspoon of soy sauce over each bowl, aiming at the rice rather than the yolk.
9. Scatter over the spring onion, nori shreds and sesame seeds, and add katsuobushi or shichimi if you like.
10. Serve immediately and tell everyone to break the yolk and mix hard before the first mouthful.