today, however, i've decided to write about something i've been making for ages. i've not tried anything new this week but i have half a mind to bake nigella's old-fashioned chocolate cake this weekend, so we will see how it goes.
i thought i'd start off simple by sharing this continuously varying recipe of my delicious, slightly unhealthy double-fried rice. i know i know, fried rice is retardedly easy, but you'll be surprised to see how an extra step and about 2 more minutes of cooking can convert a mediocre dish (that makes you go "mehhh...") into something completely satisfying. it's called double-fried rice for a very obvious reason: the rice is fried twice, hence making it sllllliiiiiiiggghhhtly unhealthy (but doubly yummy).
the ingredients i use vary from time to time as they are usually whatever i can find in the fridge or whatever i have to get rid off. since today is friday which means the exhaustion of the week's food and groceries, i was left with 3 smoked bacon rashers and a miserable slice of honey-glazed ham. they were chopped into tiny pieces and marinated in some shaohsing rice wine, soy sauce, pepper and sugar.
other ingredients: 2 cloves of garlic (diced), one small red chilli (sliced), a handful of cooked prawns, green beans (chopped), a bit of shredded lettuce, 2 eggs, and boiled rice (ideally from the fridge, overnight).
i know a lot of people like frozen vegetables in their fried rice like peas, corn kernels and carrots, but i'm sorry to say that i absolutely hate them. i marginally accept frozen peas - in fact i do put them in my fried rice at times, but corn and carrots (unless they're fresh carrots chopped up into tiny pieces) are a big no-no for me. i especially hate the texture of corn kernels and the fact that they are sweet. but if you're someone with no patience to wash vegetables and chop them up, then i suppose frozen vegetables are the way to go.
so first of all i heated up some oil in a pan (i really should get myself a good wok!) together with the diced garlic and when the oil was hot enough i dumped the rice in. the point of this is to coat every grain of rice with garlic oil.
after putting the rice aside, i put the chillis, bacon and ham in the pan. i didn't need to add oil because there was already oil in the bacon. see! not so unhealthy after all! after stirring for a bit i then added in the green beans and let them soften a bit before adding in the cooked prawns and lettuce (which didn't need to be cooked for long).
i dumped in the rice again soon after adding in the prawns and lettuce, poured a bit of soy sauce and mixed everything together.
lastly i poured in the eggs (with a bit of salt and pepper) on top of the rice. i don't like beating my eggs for fried rice. i like seeing specks of egg white mixed among the rice so i usually just break the yolks a little bit with a chopstick. also i know that a lot of people prefer making a hole in the middle of the pan, pour the eggs in, and then cover the eggs with the rice and other ingredients but i personally prefer coating the rice with eggs so that the fried rice ends up slightly wet and i don't get clumps of egg.
fry everything up and serve! :)
easypeasylemonsqueezy! and extremely yummy! adrian and tr can testify to this. :p
