Burnt Ginger Rice

I started cooking Chinese cuisine from Sanjeev Kapoor's "Best of Chinese Cooking". Its been a while though since I last cooked from that book, since there have been other favourite and more authentic recipes I have found.

There are some recipes though which I love and I unearthed the book one evening and decided to cook a full meal from it. I don't stick to the recipes ; invariably adding and subtracting from it.

This is the first of the three dishes I made that evening - Burnt Ginger Rice - really love the flavour of ginger in it, nothing else to distract. I did try adding vegetables once, but realised that it's better to have it just like that. The other dishes can do the flowery talking.

I adapted the recipe from the book and made some changes;

The original recipe had an onion and not spring onions.

Tomato sauce and red chilli paste was used which I replaced with red chilli tomato paste; I hate the taste of sweet tomato sauce in cooked food.

I do not use ajinomoto in cooking.

You could add mixed sliced vegetables to the rice, for a more substantial meal.

Burnt Ginger Rice

Ingredients:

Short Grained rice - 1 cup
Spring Onion - 2-3 with green part
Ginger - Four 1 " pieces
Oil - 2-3 tbsp
Soy sauce - 1 tsp
Red chilli tomato paste - 1 tbsp
Soak 2-3 dried red chillies in1/4 cup hot water for half hour,thenblend to a paste with 1 tomato.
Salt to taste
Vinegar - 1 tbsp

Method:

1. Soak rice in 6 cups water for an hour, drain water and bring it to boiling in a large pot, add the rice and let it cook till it is just tender. Drain water and cool.

2. Finely slice onion, chop the green part, peel and thinly slice ginger.

3. Heat oil in a wok, add sliced ginger and stir for for 2-3 minutes till the ginger turns brown, remove and drain. Reserve some pieces for garnish, finely chop remaining ginger.

4. Reheat oil in wok, add chopped fried ginger and onion, stir fry for about 2 minutes. Add cooked rice, soy sauce, red chilli tomato paste and salt to taste.

5. Cook on high heat for 1 minute, stirring continuously. Add vinegar and serve hot garnished with fried ginger slices and chopped spring onion greens.