Kwik Fix Series # 2 - Schezwan Fried Rice

Do you believe in love at first sight? No, I am not up to a romantic story. I am quite aware that this is a food blog and I must ideally post culinary related stuff. I am actually talking about a dish with which I fell in love at the first sight. I have written enough about my fervour for Chinese food.

I remember having Schezwan Fried Rice in a Singaporean restaurant at Chennai about a decade back. Till then, I never knew such a dish existed. It looked colorful and I loved the tangy and spicy taste of the dish. It's a fiery hot dish for spice lovers like me. From then on, I got hooked to it.

This is actually a quick dish to make and you can accomplish a great meal in limited time frame. Easy for even a novice cook. So, here comes my second recipe under the kwik fix series.

I haven't used readymade Schezwan sauce for the recipe. I made my own spice mix and if you don't have a food processer, you can use the ready sauce; that way making it bachelor friendly. For any Chinese food, fry the vegetables on high flame till crispy for a short time.

Ingredients:
Basmathi rice - 1 cup
Carrots, Beans, Cabbage finely chopped - 3/4 cup
Spring Onions - a few
Soya sauce - 2 tsp
Salt to taste
Sugar - 1/2 tsp
Oil 1 tablespoon
Grind to a paste
3-4 redchillies soaked in water for 15 min, half garlic

Method:

1. Soak the rice in water fo 10 min and cook with double the amount of water in an electric rice cooker. If you are using a pressure cooker, use 1.5 times water.
2. Heat the oil and melt the sugar. Add a red chilli broken into two. Finely chop the bottom thick portion of the spring onions and fry it in the oil. Reserve the top portion for garnishing. Add the ground paste and fry a little
3. Add the veggies and fry on high flame. Mix the soya sauce and salt and fry till the veggies are crisp and cooked.
4. Switch off and mix the rice. Reheat and garnish with spring onion.

Serve hot. You can make this in 30 min. By the time the rice is cooked, you can finish the frying part and do the mixing.



Sending this off to Monthly Mingle - Ravishing Rice hosted by Nags of Edible garden originating from Meeta's blog.

Gobi Manchurian

Gobi manchurian is a chinese dish tweaked a bit to suit the Indian palate. I love to have it tangy and hot. This along with a plate of chinese fried rice is absolutely scrumptious. When I was working at Chennai Infosys, this used to be the featured lunch menu on fridays at the food court. It would be either manchurian/plain fried rice or schezwan fried rice on the menu and I would be eagerly waiting for the lunch time :) I grabbed my share hot-hot and if there were any early bird prizes, I would have won hands down. To tell the truth, the food was not so great and people who knew abt out chennai food court would endorse. But, a tiny piece of paper with 'chinese food' written on it is enough to amuse me and I also believe even the baddest cook can manage to cook it reasonably well. Incidentally, paper was also invented in China. Oh, I don't eat paper by the way. However, I should confess that I have never tasted authentic chinese food and people who have tried it say it is nowhere close to what we get in Indian restaurants. I am still contented with the Indo-chinese food and do not even want to visit a chinese restaurant. Ingredients:
Cauliflower - 1 cup
Rice flour,corn flour,maida - 1:1:1 (1.5 table spoon of each aprrox)
Capsicum - 1
Onion - 1
Oil to fry
salt to taste
Chilli powder - 2 tsp
Orange color - 2 pinch (optional)
Ginger garlic paste - 2 tsp
Tomato ketchup - 1 tablespoon
Soya sauce - 2 tsp
Spring onions to garnish.

Method:
1. Break the cauliflower into medium size florets. Clean them by immersing in salted water for 5 min. I use lukewarm water but I have heard people telling it is better to use cold water as against some people telling hot water. So i choose to be moderate and use lukewarm. Someone please enlighten me as to which is the best. I always eat my caulifower with 100% belief that it's worm-free. I don't want to be paranoid here and lose the charm.
2. Make a batter with all the three flour,water,chilli powder,color,salt and ginger garlic paste.The consistency should be such that it sticks to the florets coating thoroughly. Deep fry in hot oil.
3. Cut the onion and capsicum into cubes.
4. Heat oil, fry the onions and capsicums till tender. Add the fried florets, tomato ketchup and soya sauce. Mix well and garnish with spring onions. Serve immediately with chinese fried rice.
I feel this is good to go with the rice and not much as a starter.


Click here for the chinese fried rice recipe. This time I tried a small variation. Reduced the amount of soya sauce to 1.5 tsp and added a tsp of white pepper powder. It just tasted as heavenly as before. One other tip is while frying veg for fried rice, do it over high flame quickly to get it crisp.
This is off to the kids lunch event as I find it good enough to fascinate the kids.

http://cooking4allseasons.blogspot.com/2009/03/monthly-mingle-31-kids-lunches.html http://whatsforlunchhoney.blogspot.com/2006/04/my-monthly-mingle.html

Chinese Fried Rice

Here comes my fav chinese fried rice. I just love it. Whenever I have to order something in a restaurant which has a lot of non veg food and just a little veggie stuff, I zero in on fried rice. Owing to the fact that it's one of the easy recipes that call for minimal ingredients, I believe it tastes gud enough in every restaurant. Check it out!!!

Ingredients:

Butter 1 tsp for frying
Basmathi rice - 500 g
Onions - 250g
Carrot - 250 g
Green chilli - 6
Beans - 100g
Cabbage optional
Capsicum - 200g
Leek and celery few sticks
spring onions - a handful
soya sauce 3 tsp
salt to taste

Method:
1. Wash and soak the rice for 15 min
2. Drain it
3. Fry leek and celery. This adds nutrition and flavour. Add rice and butter.
4. Cook the rice with double the amount of water and keep aside
5. Cut all the vegetables diagonally.Fry the onions, add green chillies in 2 tsp oil and fry till tender
7. Add all the veg, salt and soya sauce and fry them over high flame for a while to make them crisp.
8. Mix with rice and reheat for better taste
9. Garnish with spring onion

PS: You may also add half a tsp of ajinomotto. I generally avoid using it