The classic combination with vegetable fried rice is usually vegetable manchurian. Manchurian consists of fried vegetable dumplings served with soy sauce based gravy. We love this combination, but I rarely make it any more, mostly because the idea of fried food does not appeal to me these days , err did I say me? I meant my weighing scale :-)
Anyway I found a solution to this "problem" when I started baking the dumplings for the manchurian ( I will post the recipe for baked Manchurian this week too) . Now this combination of vegetable fried rice with manchurian has begun to appear more frequently in my menu again :-)
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Ingredients and Method to make Vegetable Fried Rice
2 cups white basmati rice soaked in 2 1/2 cups of water for 30 minutes (see notes)
3 carrots cut fine
1 cup green peas
2 cups mixed vegetables (like cauliflower florets, beans )
4 tbsp oil
2 green chilies cut very fine
1 tsp minced garlic
5 tbsp soy sauce (low sodium soy sauce)
1/2 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp green chili sauce (optional)
1 tbsp red chili sauce (chinese style)
salt to taste
Pressure cook rice until soft and keep aside. For this recipe, rice has to be really cold, so that it does not break and it retains its texture. So cool the rice thoroughly, or make rice ahead. You can even use day old rice if you want.
Heat oil in a large wok/ heavy bottomed pan/ kadhai, add green chilies and stir for a few seconds.
Add the minced garlic, stir for a couple of seconds and quickly add in the vegetables.
Keep stirring the vegetables on medium high heat until the vegetables are cooked to a soft crisp texture (they should be cooked until soft but not mushy, should still have a little bite)
Add the soy sauce, vinegar, red chili sauce, green chili sauce and stir a couple of times.
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Lower heat and add the cooked rice, salt to taste and mix well. Allow the fried rice to heat through and serve hot with manchurian or Indo chinese style steamed vegetables or other veggie dish
Serves approximately 3 to 4
Notes
Usually this rice is made with short grain rice, not long grain ones like basmati. So you can use any short grained rice for this dish too, if you use any other rice soak it for 30 minutes and cook until each grain is cooked yet separate. It is just my personal choice and preference to use basmati for this rice, I find I like the taste and texture of basmati in this style of rice.
