Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Fried Rice

Fried rice is not a Sri Lankan dish but it’s very famous dish in Sri Lanka just like other countries in the world. Day to day meals and in special occasions like weddings, fried rice is a main dish in the menu. This is a very basic fried rice which I have shown below. But there are so many kind of fried rice, like chicken fried rice, egg fried rice, seafood fried rice, mix fried rice which is included eggs, bacon, ham, chicken and sausages also. And there is just vegetable fried rice too.
If you are a vegetarian prepare this dish without eggs, I’m sure you’ll love it.
Try this basic fried rice by yourself and I hope you’ll like it…
All the very best with the recipe.




INGREDIENTS:
6 cups cooked basmati rice
2 cups carrot – julienne
2½ cups leeks – julienne
1 cup beans – small pieces
1 cup green peas – 1 cup
2 medium size onions - sliced
3 cloves of garlic - chopped
1.5cm x 1 ginger - chopped
70g butter
2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons oyster sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 eggs – beaten (optional)
Black pepper power
Salt to taste

DIRECTIONS:
Heat the wok in medium heat and add ½ amount butter into the wok. When butter is ready add ginger garlic mix and keep it for 2 – 3 seconds, then add the onions and little bit of salt and let it cook for nearly 2 - 3 minutes.
When onions are ready, add the carrot with little bit salt and mix it well. Let it cook for nearly 5 minutes or you can see the colour difference when the carrot is cooked. At that point, add the leeks and let is be there for 2 minutes. And then add beans & green peas also. Mix it well. Let it cook for nearly 2 – 3 minutes.
Then add the beaten eggs and make scramble eggs when it’s cooked mix it well with the vegetables.
Reduce the heat into low and then add all the sauces into the wok, mix it well.
Now you can add rice and mix it well.
Taste for salt.

SERVING:
You can have the fried rice with any kind of meat or fish you like. Or even you can eat it without any curry but little bit of Chinese Chili Paste :-).

NOTES:
1. Carrot and onions will cook quickly, in that case you have to add little bit salt with those two ingredients to get the nice taste.
2. If you use grated carrot, during the cooking time, large amount of water will come out from carrot, and the fried rice won’t taste good. So what I’m saying is, if you want to taste nice fried rice don’t use grated carrot.
3. When you are adding eggs into the vegetable mix, first scramble the eggs in a separate pan or just keep the vegetables aside in the same pan. If you do it like that, in the end you’ll get a nice colour in the fried rice. If not the eggs will coated in the vegetables and fried rice won’t be colourful rice.
4. If you like you can use Maggi or Knorr soup cube in the fried rice. If you are using, with little bit hot water make a paste and add it when you are adding sauces into the vegetable mix.
5. If you are making large amount of fried rice, mix them both in a separate pan with small portions.

ENJOY!!!