Pip's Plate

One thing I love about winter is that I cook. A lot. But blogging? Damn, it’s been way too long since I last posted. And the worst part? I have a whole list of things I want to write about! So look forward to a slam of new posts.

Alright, so I made this rice last week and had to make it again this week cause I liked it so much. It’s very quick – it takes about 25 minutes due to the rice needing 20 minutes to cook. But if you have leftover rice, the cook time goes down to something like  15 minutes.

You can also vary the ingredients however much you like. I’ve swapped out the fresh ginger for lemongrass (it was good, but didn’t like it as much) and I’ve made it vegetarian and with chicken (you could also substitute pork or beef or tofu). You could also introduce fresh herbs at the end for added flavor – cilantro, Thai basil, regular basil, mint, etc.

Here’s the basic recipe and you can tweak it to however you like.

Coconut Curry Fried Rice

serves: 3-4

time: 25 minutes

1 cup Thai jasmine rice

2 cups water

2-3T peanut oil, divided

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 inch fresh ginger, peeled and minced

1 serrano chile or other hot chile, minced (I use the seeds for more spice – if you want it less spicy, omit the seeds)

1/2 pound shitake mushrooms, destemmed and sliced (kitchen shears work really well for destemming the mushrooms)

1/2 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, diced (optional)

2T red Thai curry paste

1 1/2 cups coconut milk

1T fish sauce

1T fresh chopped cilantro

If you have a rice cooker, cook the rice in that so you don’t have to worry about it on the stove. Otherwise, put 2 cups water in a pot over high heat. Bring to a boil, add 1 cup rice, stir once, bring back to a boil and lower to a simmer. Cover and cook for 20 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes then fluff with a fork.

Heat 2T peanut oil in a saute pan over med-high heat. Add the garlic, ginger and serrano chiles to the pan. Stir around with a wooden spoon quickly for 30 seconds. If using chicken, add the chicken and stir around the pan to coat with the oil and seasonings. Cook the chicken for 1-2 minutes, until it’s about cooked through.

Add the shitake mushrooms, mix around the pan to coat with oil but then let sit. Moving mushrooms around a saute pan too often doesn’t give them the nice browning and also extracts a lot of moisture from the mushrooms, making your saute gooey. If you need to, add another 1T peanut oil to keep the mixture from sticking to the pan.

Cook the mushrooms for about 1 1/2 minutes, then stir around and let sit for another 1 1/2 minutes (this will give them a nice brown color and pull out the earthy flavor).

Meanwhile, whisk together the red curry paste (you can reduce this to 1T if you don’t like it spicy) and the coconut milk. Add to the saute pan and mix everything around. Scrape the bits of mushroom and chicken from the bottom of the pan (this is called deglazing) to get that flavor into the saute. When thoroughly mixed, add 1T fish sauce and mix around.

At this point, your rice should be about done. Add the rice to the saute pan and mix around, being careful to break up each piece of rice with the back of a wooden spoon. You can press the rice against the side of the pan to do this too. When the rice is completely mixed in, remove from heat and add the cilantro.

You can also serve this with grated lime zest over the top or quickly fried garlic and chiles (simply heat 1/4 cup peanut oil over med-high heat and add 3 cloves minced garlic and 1 minced serrano chile – cook the garlic and chile for 30 seconds then remove from oil and from heat. you can keep the flavored oil for later use too).

This dish would be nice served as a side to Tom Yum soup too.