Curry Fried Rice

If you sat me down and told me with the utmost solemnity that I could only eat curried foods for the rest of my life, I would probably be pretty stoked still. I love curries and if I'm ever not sure what to make for supper, the answer is probably curry.

Paige and I were in Thailand a year ago and I still remember being completely blown away by the food. Everything was fresh, had crazy amounts of flavour, and most of the time I had just bought it off a street vendor. I picked up a cookbook in a Thai airport - Classic Thai Food by Srisamorn Kongpun, and it's a great resource to flip through and fall in love with Thai food all over again. I used a recipe for fried rice from that book but changed a couple things to make it reminiscent of a curry fried rice I ate on a tiny island in the south of Thailand. Short of a fresh pineapple bowl and an ocean breeze, it turned out pretty darn well.

As I mentioned in another fried rice recipe, the key to great fried rice is using day-old rice. It's much less likely to stick together, and fry instead of steam. I had a package of salad shrimp in the freezer I needed to use up, but if you have larger prawns, those would still be great. And if shellfish aren't your thing, some diced up chicken breast would work fine.

Curry Fried Rice
Author: inspired from Srisamorn Kongpun's Kao Pad Supparod
Difficulty: easy-moderate
Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

• 1/2 can drained diced pineapple
• 1 green bell pepper
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 Thai chilli
• 1 yellow onion
• 1 cup precooked salad sized shrimp
• 1 egg
• 4 cups day-old white rice
• 1 teaspoon + 1.5 tablespoons coconut oil
• 2 heaping teaspoons yellow curry powder
• 1-2 tablespoons fish sauce, to taste

Directions
Dice bell peppers, onion, and Thai chilli. Dice the pineapple chunks into smaller pieces, between 1/2-1/4 of original size. Heat 1 teaspoon of coconut oil in a frying pan and break egg into a small bowl or cup, and use a fork to scramble well. Once the pan is hot, pour the egg mixture onto pan and roll the pan around to form a thin sheet of cooked egg. Remove from heat, and roll and shred the egg mixture and set aside. Heat remaining oil in pan, add curry powder, and allow to toast. Add onion and Thai chilli and saute until onion is translucent. Add day old rice, and fry the rice in the oil, flipping frequently and ensuring grains do not stick together. Fry rice for about 10 minutes or until starting to "crackle" in the pan. Add pineapple and bell peppers, and continue to fry. Add shrimp and heat through. Turn off the heat, add fish sauce to taste. Serve garnished with shredded eggs.

Step-by-Step Photos

Melt some coconut oil in a good sized frying pan on medium heat. It should heat up pretty quickly, so crack an egg into a coffee mug and use a fork to scramble it well.

Pour the scrambled egg into the pan, and rotate the pan around to spread out the egg as it cooks. It should cook pretty quickly, but when it's done it will look like this. Roll it off the pan (if you can), and set aside.

Add the remaining coconut oil to the pan on medium heat and add curry powder, allowing the curry powder to toast before moving onward.

Add the diced onion and Thai chilli to the pan, and saute until soft and translucent - about five minutes.

Meanwhile, shred the egg and re-dice the pineapple chunks so that all components of the fried rice are of a similar size.

Once the onion has had a chance to start cooking, add the rice. Use a spatula to break up larger pieces and flip the rice frequently. Eventually, you should be able to hear the rice sizzle and pop as it fries. That's a great thing.

After frying the rice for 10-15 minutes, add the pineapple, bell peppers, and salad shrimp to the rice. Mix well to incorporate, and heat through. I prefer my peppers on the crunchy side - if you like them softer, add the peppers first, and give them a few minutes to fry before adding the rest of the ingredients.

Turn off the heat and add fish sauce to taste. I loved the use of fish sauce in this case because I didn't want to muddy the pretty yellow curry colour with soy sauce, but you could use that if that's what you have on hand. Flip the rice around some more to ensure extra steam is let off.

Garnish with the shredded eggs, and serve.