Long Bean / French Beans Rice

This makes a simple meal of rice with ingredient, without having to cook dishes separately.  Its all-in-one rice pot and its ready to eat.

Ingredients (Serve 2)

1. 1 cup white rice 
2. 1 tablespoon dry shrimp (虾米)
3. 1 tablespoon silver fish (optional)
4. 5 shallots / small red onions
5. ½  Chinese winter sausage (lap cheong, 腊肠) (optional)
6. 4 dried shitake mushroom
7. ½ teaspoon Salt
8. 2 tablespoon light soya sauce
9. water (cooking rice and soaking ingredients)
10. 4 tablespoon cooking oil
11. handful of long bean/French beans (quantity flexible, roughly about 5-10 stalks of long beans or 10-20 stalks of French beans

Method

1. Rinse the dry shrimp from dirt, and soak with little water just enough to cover in.  Same for silverfish and mushroom.  Soak for 30 mins except mushroom for at least 2 hours to soften it.
2. Peel the shallots and slice or chop it up, set aside.
3. Wash and peel off the skin of the winter sausage (if possible) and cut into thin slice.
4. Remove the dry shrimp from water and squeeze dry, briefly chop it up to smaller chunks. Set aside.  Remove the mushroom from water, gently squeeze dry, remove and discard the stem, and cut into thin slices.  Set aside.  Remove the silver fish from water and squeeze dry, set aside.  Do not pour away the water that was used to soak the ingredients.
5. Wash the long beans/French beans, remove the ends and cut into 1/2 cm pieces.  For French beans, remove the ends by picking with fingers instead of knife and then pulling off any fibers that comes along.
6. Heat up wok, add oil and shallots and fry till fragrant and lightly brown.  Add in dry shrimps, silver fish, mushroom, chinese sausage and stir fry for 2-3 mins till fragrant.  Add in long beans/French beans. Stir fry for 2-3 mins. Add in the water that was used to soak the ingredients, salt and soya sauce.  Stir and allow it to boil, and remove from heat, set aside.
7. Rinse rice, and cook it your favorite way (rice cooker, using a pot, or steaming) (refer to http://werynice.com/home/?p=12 on how much water) (refer to http://werynice.com/home/?p=13 to cook in a pot). 
8. When the rice is about to cook, (when the water level is no more above the rice, and you can see the rice bloated and white, there is a lot of bubbling oozing out in between the rice) add in the ingredients prepared earlier, and stir to mix well.
9. Cover and leave the rice to cook till done.