"Doria" is what Japanese call rice gratin. Like omuraisu, it is one of the western influenced Japanese dishes known as "Yoshoku". "Gratin" is of course French, and today's dish will be full of French culinary influence. I am Canadian after all and French is our other official language.

I was surprised when I arrived in Poland that everyone assumed I spoke French because I'm Canadian. Ok, actually I do, but that's not the point. All of us learn French in secondary school, but speaking it is another matter. The people in the province of Quebec speak French. Some talented people can speak Franglais. Most other people only remember "mercy buckets" (merci beaucoup).

One thing I learned I've been taking for granted is the abundance of seafood in Vancouver. It's much harder to find fresh seafood in Warsaw, as it's in the middle of the country. The "fruits of the sea" mix I have is already cooked, then frozen, and includes imitation crab meat.

As chairman Kaga from my favourite cooking show Iron Chef would say, "Allez cuisine!". (I actually had no idea what he was saying for years because of the pronunciation, but one day, it just "clicked".)

Ingredients

• Seafood -- You can use anything you want, but fresh is best!
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 stalks of celery, diced
• 1.5 cups cream
• 1 bottle dry white wine -- 1 cup for cooking, rest for drinking
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tbsp butter
• parsley
• olive oil
• cooked rice -- You can use leftover or fresh rice.
• grated mozzarella -- That's what I used, but you can use your favourite cheese.
• salt
• pepper

The classic French mirepoix combo.

French wine! Crême...polonaise! I happen to be using 36% (yeah!) sour cream "for dessert", but any cream will do and you can decide how fat you want to get for yourself.

Method

• Cook carrots, onions and celery in olive oil at medium-low heat. S+P.

• When the vegetables are softened and turn a bright colour, add the seafood. S+P.
• Add white wine and simmer for a few minutes to boil off some of the alcohol.

• Add cream and keep at a low simmer. Taste and S+P to adjust.
• Melt butter in a separate small pan.
• Add flour to the butter and mix until smooth. Keep the heat low. Now we've made a roux! So much Français!

• Stir roux into the seafood pot. It will take about a minute to thicken. If it gets too thick, add some water to dilute.
• Turn off the heat and add a bunch of chopped parsley to finish.

• At this point, it's a perfectly good seafood stew. We can eat it like that and use the leftovers to make doria, which is what I did.
• Butter the bottom of a baking dish.
• Fill about half way with rice.
• Fill the rest of the way with seafood stew.
• Cover with grated mozzarella.

• Place in 185 °C oven for about 10 minutes, then turn to broil for 1-2 minutes to brown the cheese.

Et voilà! This dish can be prepared ahead of time and stored in the fridge to be baked later. It's also yet another way I like to use up leftover rice! Sigh...Asian problems...