King Prawn Fried Rice

After my traditional Scottish food venture of the past week, I decided that I was going to eat Chinese tonight. As I love both seafood and rice, I decided to have a King Prawn fried rice. I toyed with the idea of preparing a sauce to go with it but decided that I wanted it just the way it is in the picture. I have no regrets...

The thing which I like best about fried rice is that it is so versatile in the way in which it can either be used as a meal accompaniment or have any number of ingredients added to it in order to make the body of a meal itself. This recipe is for two people.

Ingredients

10 to 12 King prawns (shelled and de-veined)
4oz basmati rice
1 small onion (halved, then finely sliced)
1 clove of garlic (very finely chopped)
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp roughly chopped coriander (cilantro in USA)
2 tbsp corn oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method

The first step here is to wash the rice thoroughly in cold water and then boil it for twelve minutes in salted water. When it is done, it should be rinsed in cold water again in a sieve to cool it and shaken extremely thoroughly to remove as much of the water as possible. The rice may then be left in the sieve - over a bowl or pot - to drain as much as possible while the remaining ingredients are prepared.

When cooking King prawns - or indeed any form of shellfish - it is absolutely imperative that they not be over-cooked. The texture which they will assume should that be the case will be akin to rubber and they are likely to be quite inedible.

The wok should be brought up to a very high heat and the corn oil added. When the oil is heated, the King prawns should be added and stir fried for around thirty seconds before the onion and garlic are added. The soy sauce and the rice should then be added and the ingredients stirred for another couple of minutes. The heat should then be turned off before the seasoning and chopped coriander/cilantro are stirred through. The dish should now be served, garnished with a little more coriander.