[Cooking Series] 🍳Simple Fried Rice With a Twist

So just recently, I've been getting my hands busy with a bit of cooking in the kitchen. I'm not much of a cook but thanks to my mum (check out her page here if you love gardening!) and some practice, I've finally perfected one recipe I think I've grown to be quite good at making - fried rice.

Of course, this isn't just ANY fried rice. What we have here, ladies and gent, is an insanely simple yet tasty dish which anyone can make in 30 minutes, give or take.

I do believe that you can't go wrong with making fried rice. It's almost like there are no rules to how you can create your own version of it. Just look at me, I don't cook that generally well but this recipe is easy enough that even I can somehow come out with something edible for the family to eat.

So if you want to try it, follow these steps and see how the results turn out!

  Ingredients  

🔹 Leftover cooked rice 

My family prefers the nice firm quality of yesterday's leftover rice. It's less likely to be sticky and squishy. But if you don't have any, make a new batch. Use 2-3 cups of rice with less water. Use the pinky-finger rule or something like that.

🔹 2 onions (Bawang besar)
Slice each medium-sized onion into smaller pieces to make it easier for you to ground (tumbuk) them with mortar and pestle (lesung batu). Do this until they're evenly crushed. 

🔹 1 cup of anchovies (ikan bilis)
Wash and rinse them in a clean container and then pour them in to the lesung batu. Crush them as finely as you can. This ingredient is the KEY to the flavour of your fried rice later.

🔹 4-6 pieces of dried chilies (cili kering)
The use of dried chilies is something my mum learned from the growing YouTube channel - Sugu Pavithra. It makes so much difference to our dishes because it adds that spicy tasty flavour we crave. For our fried rice, you want to wash and snip the dried chilies into smaller pieces. Then, putting them in a container, pour warm water to get the seeds out so that our fried rice won't be overly spicy. Next, after filtering the water out from the dried chilies, crush them together with our anchovies and onions. Now, we got a nice paste to start making our fried rice.

🔹 1 carrot (optional)
You can dice them into small cubes to add some veggies in your fried rice OR opt for other veggies as well.

🔹 Salt & White Pepper

🔹 Leftover fried fish (optional)
Leftover fried fish adds a savoury quality to your fried rice. 

  Time to Grab the Pan!  

1️⃣ Sauté the Paste

After adding a bit of oil into your pan and having the heat on medium, add your paste (remember the crushed onions, dried chilies & anchovies we did). As my mum said, take your time to let your paste, especially the anchovies to really cook. You'd know this when the anchovies or bits of them turn a little crispy and the paste you're frying becomes less watery and slightly brown.

2️⃣ Put in Veggies & Leftover Fried Fish

This shouldn't take too long. As long as your veggies are cooked, you're done with this step. As for your fried fish, it's already cooked so re-frying it again just helps to warm it up.

3️⃣ Add Salt & White Pepper

Add a pinch or two of salt and white pepper. We'll come back to this again in a minute. Now make sure to stir everything well.

4️⃣ Shower the Glorious Rice into the Pan!

We're almost done! But first, in the rice pot, make sure you have already crushed the rice with a spoon so that they aren't clumping together. Then pour the rice into the pan. If you see clumps of rice in the pan, break them apart with your cooking spoon. Turn the heat slightly up and mix everything thoroughly. We want the paste we sautéed earlier to be perfectly mixed with the rice.

 5️⃣ Add Salt & White Pepper

If necessary, now is the time you can add more salt or white pepper to flavour up your fried rice. Add little by little until everything tastes just right. Oh, and this is also the perfect time to taste-test your dish. Lower the heat when you do!

✨Serve and eat!

Because there aren't that much variety of veggies in our dish, we make it a habit to eat our fried rice with ulam from my mum's garden. I truly recommend for you to try and eat with fresh ulam as well. 

Other than that, selamat makan!