Thai Fried Rice

I went for a holiday to Thailand with my best friends last year. As a food lover, one of the factors that influence my travel decisions is the local cuisine! We had rented a villa that came with its own chef to make us our meals (free cooking lessons, yay!). It is definitely a wonderful experience to visit the place where some of your favourite food comes from but to actually learn how to make it is much more exciting.

So me and my friends huddled around our very generous chef and looked on while she bustled about and prepared our meal. I knew if I really wanted to keep my mental notes from fading away, I had to actually prepare what I had learnt.

One of the simplest things that I always struggle to get right is par-boiling rice. At home, we use rice that gets super soft on cooking because that is the way Maharashtrian rice usually is. We use varieties of pure white basmati that I never manage to get right for fried rice dishes. Thank fully I have found a long grain variety that cooks just perfect! Also it does not have the signature basmati aroma; which is wonderful, but I personally don’t prefer it in non Indian food.

And so, with the perfect rice, I managed to make this within a month of arriving in London. I have made it many times since then because it goes wonderfully with a lot of stir fry and curry dishes. (But mostly because it is so tasty and easy to make)

This recipe is vegetarian, but you can make it with chicken or prawns too. Just chop up the meat to bite sized pieces and toss it in with the carrots till golden and continue with the rest of the directions.

Ingredients

• 4 cups partially cooked rice
• 1 large carrot chopped
• 1 bunch spring onion thinly sliced
• 3-4 mushrooms finely chopped
• 1 egg
• Salt to taste
• 1 tsp fish sauce
• 1 ½ tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp chicken seasoning powder (I have a packet I bought in Thailand. It is by Knorr and tastes like garlic/chicken salt)
• ¼ cup oil

Note: You can always use other vegetables of your choice

Method

• Heat oil in a wok on high (I am not using a wok here as you can see, for the plain reason that I don’t have one. It would have made all the stirring a lot easier. But I managed just fine in this thick bottomed big pot)

• Toss in the carrot and half the seasoning powder

• When the carrot is soft, add the white part of the spring onion and mushroom

• Break in the egg and stir till it gets cooked
• Add in the rice, soy sauce and fish sauce
• Stir to combine
• Season with salt
• Garnish with remaining spring onion greens and serve with a stir fry or curry of your choice

Note: If you skip the fish sauce, it makes a neat version of Chinese fried rice