Like Bland on Rice

20^th June 2011 – Five-Spiced Pork Fried Rice

Second night of cooking in a row, and the second night of pork, but I backed up to make Donna Hays Five-spiced pork fried rice.

It looked delicious and I am loving rice sick at the moment so I seemed a good excuse to over indulge. I headed off to the shop with my list of things I needed which seemed pretty easy. For some bizarre reason Donna Hay had written in her book "green onions (scallions)" which confused the hell out of me! I thought (being the culinary genius that I am) scallions were spring onions, but I was confused as to why if that's what it was, Donna - a fellow Aussie - wouldn't write that. Pretentious fool. I knew I didn't like her. Anyway, I called Sian and she confirmed that Donna is an idiot. I found everything else without any trouble and headed home to get cracking.

For some reason, a recipe for four people called for six cups of rice! How hungry are these people?! I halved the recipe as there was only one of me and quartering the recipe is way too complex when it already calls for half teaspoons. I can nail a rice (I use jasmine and have a fool proof way of microwave cooking it) but this time, it wasn't great, it was sticky and gluggy. Not my best effort and would have ruined my rice-reputation, had anyone been there to see it... or had I posted it on the internet.

I used the wok as I didn't think we had a pan big enough, and chucked in all the flavouring ingredients...which burnt and formed a clump, so I chucked them straight back out again. I started again, reduced the heat and this time it worked much better. I added the pork but had no idea how to cook pork or even how to tell if it is cooked. I took it out when it was brown and added the rice. There was SO much rice. I was concerned about the pork not being cooked, so tipped the rice out and cooked the pork a bit more, then recombined it all and, added the soy and was good to go!

The pork was overcooked, there wasn't enough of it (even though I had slightly more than the recipe called for) and the rice was sort of flavourless. I had remembered buying hoisin sauce so didn't check for that in the pantry before I went to the shops but it turns out I bought it in Singapore and we didn't have any. Not to worry, I used Sweet Soy instead and absolutely covered my rice in it to add flavour.

It was a really bland tasting dish (I'm sensing a pattern with Donna) but I could see how it could have been nice. Shame. Anyway since there are butt loads of the stuff, I'll be eating it for the rest of my life...just covered in sweet soy.

Tips: Learn how to cook pork and don't use the full quantity of rice suggested.

Music: Bob Marley and the Wailers.