Chicken and Vegetable Fried (Brown) Rice

So many times in years gone by, I've screwed up fried rice after fried rice. The pan isn't hot enough. The rice isn't yesterdays. You're using the wrong oil. No longer. I've designed this recipe so it isn't a stodgy mess, and added a little Argentinian-inspired zing to it with a radish and coriander salsa. On top of that, I've roasted some sweet root vegetables for some serious body. The recipe is flexible though: use whatever you've got, but the method is sound and the brown rice works nicely. Get frying!

Ingredients

4 Cups Cooked Brown Rice (long grain is ideal, medium is fine too)

5 Chicken Thighs, skin on.

3 Carrots, cut into rings

3 Small Orange Kumara, cut into rings

A Double Handful of button Mushrooms

Big Bunch of Coriander (half set aside for salsa)

1 Bulb of Garlic, peeled and crushed with the flat part of the knife blade

1 Inch of Ginger, very finely julienned

1 Teaspoon Chili Powder

2 Spring Onions, finely sliced

4 Eggs

Peanut Oil

Salt

Pepper

Dark Soy Sauce

For the Salsa

Coriander (from the rice)

5 Radishes

Rice Wine Vinegar

Rice Bran oil

1 Fresh Chilli (mild, like jalapeño)

Salt

Pepper

Method

By cooking the vegetables separately and using batch-fried brown rice on a high heat, fried rice is easy.

Preheat the oven to 190 C.

Make the salsa first. Simply mince half the coriander stalks and leaves with the radishes and chili. Soak in rice wine vinegar, and then add a couple of tablespoons of Rice Bran oil. Salt and pepper to taste.

Blanch the carrots and kumara in a pot of salted water for 3 minutes. Once done. allow to cool, then toss with the mushrooms and a couple of lugs of peanut oil in a roasting tray, along with the garlic and chili powder. Bang it into the oven for thirty minutes.

Meanwhile, in a separate roasting tray, lightly salt the chicken thighs, toss in the peanut oil and the ginger. Bang it in the oven and roast under the vegetables.

While both are cooking, fry the rice in batches in peanut oil along with the spring onions and a generous amount of pepper. Do this on a very high heat and keep the rice moving. They'll start popping and cracking out of the pan. Keep going until the oil starts to dry up, then start the next batch with a little fresh oil.

Once the rice is done empty it from the pan into the serving boil and fry the eggs. Simply crack the eggs into a hot, oiled pan, and beat the eggs with a wooden spoon or something similar. Separate into chunks, then add to the rice.

Once the vegetables and chicken are done, pull them out of the oven. Mix the rice in with the vegetables. Shred the chicken from the bone and into the rice, making sure you get all the juices and bits of ginger. Finally, add the coriander and mix it through. Depending on how long this takes, you may want reheat it gently on the stove in the frying pan. It's pretty flexible.

Toss it all together along, then season with another hit of pepper.

Dress with the salsa and a little bit of soy if it needs it!

Enjoy!