Timi’s Veg Fried Rice

Ingredients:

For the rice:
1 cup of uncooked long grain rice
1/2 tbsp of salt
water

For for the garlic oil:
approximately 1/4 cup of cooking oil (or less)
6 minced big garlic pods

For the veggies to be mixed:
1 medium carrot cut into small cubes
1/3 cup of green peas
string beans sliced into 1/2″ pieces
1 big onion, sliced

Others:

soy sauce
3 eggs

Directions:

1. Wash the rice thoroughly and let it soak for about half an hour. Let the water boil and then put the rice. When the rice is half-done, put in the salt. Just check on your rice as often as you can because you have to take it out of the fire and drain it just when it is just about to be fully cooked. You can do this earlier and let the rice cool, mixing it lightly with a for. The whole process prevents the rice from sticking together.

2. Take about 3/4 of the oil and fry the garlic on it until the garlic is medium brown. Take the whole thing out and set it aside.

3. Slightly boil the veggies together until they are partially cooked. Drain the veggies. Pour in the remaining oil in the pan and then saute the onions along with the veggies and set this aside.

4. Beat the eggs and also set it aside.

5. It is much better to do the following procedure in batches of two cups of rice so the fried rice is cooked properly and everything is mixed evenly. Make sure that your wok (or frying pan) is hot enough. Take some of your garlic oil (with ample amount of the fried garlic) and let it heat up a bit too, then put your rice, continuously stirring but careful not to break the grains apart and let the rice cook.

6. Add in the veg, and the eggs and approximately a tablespoon of soy sauce. Keep on stirring the rice until the soy sauce is mixed evenly and the eggs had coated almost each and every grain. Add more eggs if you want some egg bits on your fried rice.

Actually, people might say that this is too much of work for just fried rice but it really does make a lot of difference on the taste. The secret of a good fried rice is a half cooked (or frozen rice), very hot wok, and the soy sauce and egg mixed evenly into the rice. The garlic oil not only gives it more of a Filipino twist (sinangag, anyone?) but it gives the dish more of an “oomph!”.

It really disappoints me that in these three friggin’ years that I am living in this goddarnfersaken country, I still have not yet found a decent Filipino restaurant. Of course again, that’s probably just picky ol’ me. But still, I bet a lot of OFW’s had experienced entering a Filipino restaurant with such high expectations and then leaving the same joint with that “Wotdafrigginhellwasthat?” reaction afterwards. This had happened to me many times already (and to different restaurants too) that I actually avoid going to ANY FILIPINO RESTAURANT to spare myself from utter disappointment.

You see, I adore food. And really, really good food makes me more happy than those heavy-duty bling-blings (I swear, ask the hubby). Of course there are food that I really cannot bring myself to eat…take balut for example…and ‘em lil one-day-old chicks…I’m sorry but they totally do freak me out…And well, siopao…don’t ask, I won’t be able to answer you anyway, I just don’t like it.

As for all time favorites, pork sinigang will always be number one on my list. Nothing can beat the taste of that hot, uber sour (I prefer it with the chili “kick” ) tamarind-flavored broth, and of course the pork meat dipped in fish-sauce with kalamansi (local Filipino lime) or just toyo (soy sauce) and ‘em sliced tiger chilis.

Next is sisig, inihaw na baboy and pork kilawin. Again pork-dishes people. Of course, I don’t eat just any sisig or kilawin…they have to be cooked in a particular way, where the meat (meat? do you even call that meat? ) has this charcoal-broiled first so they have that slightly grilled taste…and NO LIVER…hate ‘em icky-tasting buggers *shivers*. It is such sad that pork is BANNED in this country, I will have to wait til my next vacation (BOO!)

My veggie favorites would be lato (some kind of seaweed thingie) salad, ensalada with dahon ng kamote (sweet potato leaves salad), pinakbet, lumpiang gulay (veggie spring rolls) and of course, kangkong kernitz!

Of course I can cook the veggie dishes here, as for the pork ones, I had tried substituting chicken for pork in the kilawin, complete numminess! I used to cook caldereta at home too, (using mashed liver for the gravy…and not liverspread) and bistek as well, But well, there’s too much of beef in this country that I am sick of it (hubby doesn’t eat much of beef either…except when it’s really, really tender).

So all you Filipino foodies, what are your favorite Filipino Food?