Ladies & Gentelmen, I Give You...Itaria-Don

It's fusion, I tell you, fusion! East-West fusion food is not just limited to fancy chefs on the Food Network and over-hip, hispter restaurants!

When one only has ONE stove-top burner, NO oven, a small grill and a rice cooker you either tend to get boring or creative.

Well, today marks the start of my creative streak. Behold!

The Cooking Technique: Asian Stir-Fry

The Cuisine Inspiration: Italian

The Presentation Inspiration: Japanese "Donburi" (something over rice)

The Main Ingredients: rice, chicken, olive oil, tomato, dried oregano, red wine vinegar and a bit of salt. (Don't ask me about amounts, but I did use 1 tomato and enough chicken for one person, so basic rule of thumb is 1 person gets one tomato and the rest is up to you.)

The Fusion Process:

1) Put rice in rice cooker - or cook rice however you cook it. I'm in Japan and Mel is Filipino, so rule of thumb in either Kyoto or NYC is rice cooker. Turn on.

2) Put olive oil into saucepan, and when hot, put chicken in. Put a lot of oregano (so that you can actually smell it, I like oregano, however to each their own, you can put whatever spice but I have oregano and basil on a regular basis). Start stir-frying on medium-low heat level. If you have too much olive oil drain a bit, but keep enough to prevent chicken from burning and to help make the sauce.

3) That's where the tomatoes come in. Dice them beforehand, and when the chicken is 99% done cooking, drop them in. Add more oregano, a bit of salt and red wine vinegar to your liking - its like stir-frying a chicken salad! (I came up with the red wine vinegar at the last minute, I like a little zing).

4) At this point, the juices in the tomato will make the stir-fry more like a boil/sautee - that's what happened to me, since I have a really small pan. Don't worry about it - FUSION! Keep boiling/sauteeing/stir-frying the whole lot (make sure there is liquid enough for some sauce, you don't want a dry pan) till the rice is done - purpose is to keep it all piping hot and to finish cooking hte chicken. But you don't want your tomatoes boiled into a pulp. Taste sauce, add more oregano, red wine vinegar, etc. to your liking.

5) Put rice in bowl, add stir-fry + sauce ON TOP of rice. This is important - putting it on top puts the "don" in "donburi." Mix as you like, to get the taste spread throughout the rice.

Presto! Some sort of twist on Italian food with a further Japanese twist! I call it "Itaria-don." In Japanese, "Italy" is "Itaria" so I just add "don" to indicate that this is a "donburi" or "something over rice." Yum, yum!

If there are leftovers, place in tupperware, put in fridge and select your favorite bento box for lunch the next day. Put the rice in the top part (with the tupperware-ish top) and the chicken/tomato stir fry in the bottom. Add some kalamata olives and warm feta cheese and it becomes..."Girisha-don." ("Greece" is "girisha.")

Hmm...need to get more chicken. And have to wait till I get home for the feta cheese.