Cooking rice isn't really difficult, but it's something I don't do nearly as often as I should, considering I love the stuff. Perhaps it's because the pot is so difficult to clean afterwards and the fact that it's harder to make just enough for one or two people doesn't help. Whatever the reasons, rice is both delicious and awfully good for you, therefore it's worth making the idea of cooking it seem more attractive. Here's one way of doing just that and it's dead simple - cook a load of it and keep some in the fridge for the next day. First of all, you only need to clean the pot once, and second, you don't need to worry about cooking too much. Rice will keep for 3 or 4 days in the fridge if you cover it.
You should cover everything you store in the fridge, by the way, for reasons of hygiene. In Britain the environmental authorities which check hotels and restaurants insist on it. I know this because I worked in a hotel and my boss used to make us cover everything with Clingfilm every time the inspector was due. Don't misunderstand me, I wasn't employed to cook anything in the hotel. I just washed dishes and picked things off the floor and put them onto plates when the chef was throwing tantrums.
Anyway, we were talking about rice. So you've had your Spinach and paneer, or whatever, with rice and stuck a load of leftover rice in the fridge and now you're wondering what to do with it. Here's a good handy recipe, or rather a set of guidelines, since you can juggle the ingredients to utilise what's lying around. The rice is the only thing that's really necessary; otherwise it would hardly be vegetable fried rice would it? Whatever vegetables you use, you won't go far wrong by bunging in some soy sauce.
Try to use firm vegetables which won't disintegrate or produce large quantities of juice. Good examples are cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, radishes, potatoes, mushrooms, spring onions, peppers - get the picture?
Ingredients
A third of a small cabbage
1 carrot
3 or 4 spring onions
A small piece of root ginger and/or a half tsp. whole coriander seeds
Oil (not olive oil - it spoils at high temperatures)
Cooked rice
Soy sauce
Chop everything into really small pieces - this is the most time consuming part. The cooking only takes ten minutes. Put some oil in a large frying pan or a wok if you have one. Heat it till it's really hot. You should start to smell the oil and you'll see vapour coming off it. Chuck everything in except the rice and soy sauce, and stir fry for about 5 minutes. The contents of the pan should sizzle and steam a lot. You can chuck it about a bit and bang the pan around. Pretend you're a professional chef working in a Chinese restaurant - it's good fun. Add some soy sauce - a large splash or two - and stir a bit more to drive off the liquid. Next add the rice and mix it around more gently, to coat it with oil and vegetables and separate the grains. Two or three minutes of this and it's ready.
Here are some more killer combinations to give you some ideas.
Mushroom, sweetcorn and cashew nuts.
Green peas, red peppers and onion.
Carrots, green beans and spring onions.
Cauliflower, potato and green peas.