RECIPE: FRIED RICE WITH THREE SOY SAUCES (NASI GORENG MASAK TIGA KICAP)

This is my favourite way of cooking fried rice. The different textures and flavours of the soy sauces, in my opinion, enhance the taste of the rice. If you can’t find caramel soy sauce, substitute it with the Indonesian Kecap Manis.

Cook your rice at least six hours, preferably overnight, before making this dish and spread it out on a tray. I find a large roasting pan or large cookie tray to work well here. Just before cooking, add pepper and salt to the rice that is on the tray and mix well. This way, your pepper and salt will be evenly distributed before you add the rice to the wok. Another thing - make sure that your rice is not lumpy when you add it to the cooking process.


The beauty of cooking fried rice is that you can put anything you like in it, in terms of meat or seafood, and vegetables. All the vegetables that went into this fried rice (yes the garlic too) came from our garden. There’s nothing nicer than eating freshly picked vegetables, out of your own garden, I say. A big thumbs up to Mr G and his veggie patch!

So, here’s the recipe for my FRIED RICE WITH THREE SOY SAUCES which I served with SAMBAL BELACHAN WITH KAFFIR LIME LEAVES and FRIED EGG WITH CARAMEL SOY SAUCE.


Ingredients – for 6

4 cups of uncooked rice – cook according to method and left to cool
Meat or seafood of choice – I used 300g cooked prawns and 300g diced ham
Vegetables of choice – I used 2 large diced carrots, large handful of snow peas, 200g of sliced French beans and a handful of baby corn (sliced at an angle)
1 tsp salt and pepper to taste – I mixed this into the rice before frying. Go easy on the salt as the soy sauces will already be salty
4 cloves garlic – minced
2 large spring onions – finely sliced
2 to 4 red chillies – finely sliced (I used red cayenne chillies)
4 tbsp or to taste light soy sauce
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp or to taste caramel or sweet soy sauce
2 tsp minced chillies – optional (I would put this in if I did not make any SAMBAL BELACHAN WITH KAFFIR LIME LEAVES to accompany the dish. As I did, I omitted this ingredient)
Oil for sautéing
Cucumber - sliced (optional)

Method

Heat the oil in a large wok and sauté the garlic for 30 secs. Add in the carrots and French beans and cook until the carrots and beans are half cooked.

Next add in the ham and prawns and fry for 30 secs. Moisten with 1 tbsp of the light soy sauce and add in the baby corn, snow peas, sliced chillies and crushed chillies (if using). Cook for a minute.
To make it easier to distribute the meat/vegetables, lift out half of it into a bowl. Now add half of the rice into the wok.

Mix evenly and put half of all the sauces onto the rice. Mix well, ensuring that you cannot see any white bits of rice.

Now add the remainder vegetables, followed by the rice and the remainder of the sauces. Mix well and add more soy sauces if you prefer, depending on your preference, how deep you would like the colour of your fried rice to be. If you like it dark, add either more dark or caramel soy sauce, remembering that the dark soy sauce will not only give you a darker colour but could also make your fried rice saltier. I’d recommend using the caramel soy sauce to achieve the intense colour.

Garnish with the spring onions, lift and serve whilst still hot with cucumber slices, topped with FRIED EGG WITH CARAMEL SOY SAUCE and a side dish of SAMBAL BELACHAN WITH KAFFIR LIME LEAVES.