Salted Fish Fried Rice

Fried Rice has always been a boon and bane for me. I like eating it, it's super simple to cook (another 'throw everything in your fridge' dish), but gosh, so darn hard to get right! How do hawkers get that distinctively 'fried rice' taste? I can only describe it 'that slightly chao-da taste' that can't seem to be replicated at home. I strongly suspect it's because these guys probably never really wash their kwalis. It's the burnt on burnt taste so when u scrape the kwali - voila! Kinda like why people like claypot rice. Burnt bits! But imagine the srubbing up afterwards, not to mention burning my precious pots!

There's been a lot experimenting for me when it comes to fried rice - egg before rice or rice before egg? The former makes the fried rice drier, the latter makes the fried rice a bit wet. Personal preference I guess.

Ingredients (feeds 2)
2 bowls overnight rice - essential! Otherwise freshly cooked rice is just too soft.
1 handfull bean sprouts
Salted fish - don't quite know how to describe quantities for this, 2 pieces chopped up?
1 handful ikan billis
2 eggs, beaten
1 tomato, cubed
1 tsp XO sauce
1 tsp spicy bean sauce
1 tsp sambal (can add more to taste)
1 garlic, crushed
2 shallots, chopped
Cooking oil

Method
1) Fry the ikan billis and salted fish until crispy. Set aside.
2) Fry the garlic and shallots in the oil until fragrant.
3) The next few steps have to be done very swiftly - pour in the sauces, tomato cubes, and lastly, bean sprouts. Fry very briefly just to incoporate.
4) Add the egg. This will stick to the bottom of the pan so quickly, as soon as it solidifies, scrape it off the bottom and incorporate it with the rest of the ingredients. Remember to keep 'chopping' into tiny pieces.
5) Once all the egg is dry, pour in the rice. Really flatten it (to get it nearer the heat) and then incoporate again.
6) Lastly, return the salted fish and ikan billis and incorporate. Serve immediately. Alternatively, the ikan billis can be served separately to keep it crispy.