Truth be told, I was going through a rough patch, both family wise and
health wise. I won’t go into too much detail, but I will say that thankfully,
things have levelled off and I thank God for that.
I will confess, though… I thought of letting my little blog
go. But I had an intervention from one of our country’s foremost food bloggers…
if you’ve ever visited Simply Trini Cooking for a quick recipe for one of our
local dishes, then you know who I am talking about. Mr. Felix Padilla himself.
It was truly an honour to chat with him, and when I tell you
that we talked about food for more than 4 hours straight, you must know. In
that time, he reminded me why we food bloggers need to keep doing what we are
doing, and that real food love never dies. We Trinis are an inventive people, and
the very meals we prepare are a testimony to that. It’s necessary to see how
others do things, so we can always learn and also compare.
“Please don’t stop blogging,” he had told me. “You have to continue.”
I gave him my word.
Now I had no idea at all what my new subject was going to
be, but then it hit me when I was trying to figure out a simple side to go with
some oven barbecued chicken I was making, and knowing the vegetarian child I
have, it had to be something that could also stand on its own. And then I saw
the leftover cooked white rice I had in the fridge and realised that I had a
good bit of fresh vegetables to play with, the results of which you are seeing
here today with my entry for June 2013, my version of egg fried rice, which
went a little something like this…
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One thing I realised is that when you’re making fried rice, there’s
a lot of chopping involved. Here you see a carrot that was diced really small,
2 stalks imported celery (chopped), a small bunch of chive (chopped) and three red pimento
peppers (chopped). I also diced up a small onion (not photographed) and had a cup of
thawed frozen green peas (also not photographed).
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Next, I diced up some ginger to make about 3 tablespoons or
so, plus 3 large cloves of fresh garlic.
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I opened up a can of baby corn and cut them into chunks.
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The next things to prep were the wet ingredients; two eggs, oyster sauce and some light soy sauce. The eggs were beaten until fluffy. Unfortunately,
the oyster sauce I had was literally ‘on its last’, so I simply added a few
tablespoons to the bottle and swished it about so every last bit of it came out
the bottle.
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Now for the cooking…
I got my old, faithful saucepan, placed it on medium heat and
added a little olive oil to it. I poured in the eggs – did not season them at
all – and let them cook. A soon as they were set, I folded them over like an
omelette, and set it aside on a plate. I then took my knife and cut it up
into small pieces so they would be ready for the second to last step.
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The same pan then received a potspoonful of soya oil,
and was placed on medium high heat. I added in the ginger, garlic, carrots and
onions and let them cook for a couple of minutes so the carrots would get a
head start. Next came ¾ of the chopped pimento peppers and all the chopped
celery, followed by the green peas. Everything was stirred and cooked for a
couple more minutes.
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Next came the cold cooked white rice; it was stirred in carefully
so everything was evenly blended. (You can imagine the lovely scent coming
through the kitchen…)
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Now this next part went pretty fast. In went the mixed soy
sauce and oyster sauce, the cut up baby corn, the remainder of pimento peppers,
the chopped fried egg and ¾ of the chopped chives. Everything was gently, yet quickly stirred for a minute or two and taken off the flame.
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And next thing you know, POT DONE. All it needed was the
remainder of chives to be placed in the middle.
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I enjoyed this delicious and fragrant rice with two pieces of the oven barbecued
chicken, a little cooked barbecue sauce and a quick salad of romaine lettuce and
tomatoes.
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I must say that it felt really good to do this blog entry.
As always, my family enjoyed this meal with gusto and I felt even happier seeing
them take leftovers with them to work as well.
Huge thanks goes to Felix for getting me back into the swing of
things, and it hope that this will be the first of more to come for 2013. Thank you so much for viewing my new entry and take
care, my friends.
And like I always say, don’t forget to mind the pot!
