The other evening I had some raw shrimp and some left-over rice so it made perfect sense that I should make a fried rice dish for dinner.
A couple of years ago when scouring the internet for a buttermilk fried chicken recipe I landed on Marc Matsumoto’s food blog called norecipes.com.
He had some amazing dishes on there, all his own creations, and among them I found this winning recipe for the Best Buttermilk Fried Chicken. So I checked it out again, this time looking for a shrimp fried rice.
Seek and you shall find, and I did! I adapted his recipe with the items I had on hand, so the more exotic spices he used were absent in my rendition, but it was delicious, nonetheless, and talk about presentation. I loved his idea of the fried egg on top instead of the traditional way of scrambling the eggs.
One of the key ingredients was garlic chives, a flat-leaved chive that is used in a lot of Asian cooking, and which I have been growing for many years in my garden. I still have quite a bit of it, and I always have garlic in the house so I was anxious to make those garlic chips.
Fried rice dishes in general allow for much variation and are a good way of using up leftovers. You can flavor it with whatever spices you like and add whatever veggies or protein you like.
Garlic Chive Shrimp Fried Rice With Garlic Chips
(adapted from Marc Matsumoto’s norecipes.com)
1 tablespoon canola oil
4 cloves garlic, sliced thin
¾ to 1 pound of medium or large raw shrimp, cleaned and deveined, cut into pieces (we like a lot of shrimp)
1 medium red pepper, cut in small pieces
4 cups of cold, cooked rice
½ cup chopped garlic chives
1 tablespoon kosher salt
freshly cracked pepper ( white or black)
2 tablespoons Ponzu Sauce (citrus flavored soy sauce)
2 tablespoons mirin (sweet Japanese cooking wine)
2 pan fried eggs, sunny side up
Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium high heat and add the garlic. Fry the garlic until golden brown. Then transfer to a paper towel lined plate.
Fry the shrimp in the garlic flavored oil until it’s barely cooked (just turns pink). Then transfer to a plate. Add the red pepper to the pan and fry for 1 minute. Transfer to plate with the shrimp.
Make sure there is still enough oil left in the pan (add more if necessary). Then add the cooked rice and fry using a pressing motion (not a cutting motion) with a spatula to break up any clumps.
Add the garlic chives, salt and pepper and continue to stir-fry until the herbs are fragrant.
Add the shrimp and red peppers back in and drizzle with Ponzu sauce and mirin evenly over the rice and stir until the liquid has completely evaporated.
To plate the rice, press some rice into a ramekin or shallow bowl and invert onto a plate.
Top with a fried egg and some garlic chips and serve.