Simple fried rice

Holy cats did I fail at keeping up over the summer. No matter, I will still keep this up and kicking as I can.

I have been up to a lot of cooking, but not a lot of picture-taking, so I figured that I'd share a simple off-the-cuff recipe that I made yesterday that is easy to do, and turned out quite well. It involves turning a grocery store-made seasoned pork loin and leftover Chinese take-out into delicious fried rice.

Before he left for a gig trip to Texas and Mexico last week, Tom made us a pork loin with roasted brussels sprouts. I would say there was about 8-10 ounces of it leftover after we ate dinner. The night before he left for Mexico, he ordered us some Chinese take-out because he didn't feel like cooking. So, faced with most of a large take-out bucket of several-days-old white rice and some pre-cooked pork, I needed to use it up.

I drizzled some olive oil and sesame oil to my taste in a non-stick Calphalon pan (I love ours, it was a gift). With the burner on almost-high, wait for the oil to get hot, then dump the rice in and break it up. I'm thinking that if it was just day-old rice you wouldn't have to spend as much time breaking up lumps, so lesson learned there. I cut the pork into bite-sized pieces, and while continuing to break up the rice, put in probably about a cup or so of frozen peas. I added a few sprinkles of Thai spice we happened to have from Penszey's Seasonings (totally optional, of course),and some soy sauce to taste and color the rice. Then I tossed in the pork in, and diced about a quarter of a large red onion. The onion got thrown in (keep stirring so that it doesn't burn, or turn the heat down a bit while chopping, keep in mind I was making this on the fly), and to brighten things up, I sprinkled some rice vinegar into the pan.

Stir and cook until the rice shows signs of browning and everything is nice and warmed through. Take it off the burner and stir for a bit to keep the rice from burning (this may just be my pan or preference), and voila, you've just made some awesome, simple fried rice!

This could probably also be done with freshly-steamed white rice, but from what I understand, day-old rice will turn out far better. Tom has tried fried rice with fresh rice, and it comes out a bit more moist than it probably should (but still good, of course).

We are planning a Mexican-inspired Christmas dinner, and I'd like to get that up here, too, so stay tuned!