fried rice with cilantro

Here’s a fresh variation on fried rice. Add cilantro, some tomato chunks, and a squeeze of lime juice into the mix of ingredients. I grew up eating fried rice, always cooked the Asian way and often topped with a thin egg pancake to make what the Japanese call omu-rice, a shortened term for omelet-rice.

Today’s variation, though, uses the ingredients left over from a salsa recipe, and smells fresh.

The list of ingredients:
chopped or diced mushrooms, carrots, shallots, zucchini, bell pepper, cilantro sprigs, and prawns.

1. Heat a nonstick skillet.
2. drizzle olive oil and see that it heats up to the point where it flows easily across the bottom of the pan.
3. pour in the diced shallots and carrots.
4. when the shallots seem half transparent, add the zucchini and bell pepper.
5. after the zucchini seems half cooked, add the mushrooms.
* try not to crowd the pan. if there isn’t enough space, push the other ingredients to the side before adding the new one.
6. Add the prawns and cilantro, and the tomato when the prawns turn pink.
7. When everything is cooked, squeeze some lime juice into the stir-fry, then add a serving of already cooked rice.
8. Mix the rice into the stir-fry until all of the ingredients are mixed evenly.

Here’s summary:
stir fry the vegetables, adding them one by one. Start with the carrots and shallots and bell pepper, which take longer to cook. Then gradually add the others and the prawns. Add the tomato in the end, because it gives off water. Lime juice and cilantro give the stir-fry a fresh spring taste.

Tags: cilantro, cooking, food, fried rice