Egg-Fried Rice with Fragrant Ginger Broccoli (China)

I probably already told you this, but I really hate the taste of ginger.  Root ginger that is - stem ginger I actually quite like - especially ginger biscuits.  But root ginger is a big no for me - I don't like the taste or the flavour at all. 


 This recipe also includes chilli - whichI know I've told you I also hate.  Happily, this recipe says seeds optional so we opted out of those and only included the flesh of the chilli.  

So this recipe was a challenge on two fronts for me, but it sounded very appealing to Soph and my brother-in-law so they were keen to try it sooner rather than later.  

Step one is cooking the rice. A particularly easy step for us because we have a rice cooker.  So, we put the rice and water in, pushed the 'cook' button and wandered off and left that to cook.  

Next, you boil the brocolli.  The recipe calls for long-stem brocolli but unfortuntely we couldn't find any of this on our shopping day so we just bought a regular brocolli with a long stem.  Before you say it, we do know they're not the same but we figured it would be close enough to work.  

So you boil the brocolli until it's cooked but crunchy - we did not do this but that was completely accidental - we managed to overcook it. Once it's cooked, you drain it and pour over the soy, ginger and chilli mixture and put the lid back on the pan so that it infuses with the brocolli. This was something we'd never done or considered doing before so we were very curious to see how it turned out - it seemed a very interesting step.  

While that's infusing, you start the egg fried rice.  Soph and I had made egg fried rice before - a fair few times in fact. The method in this recipe though was slightly different to usual. You heat the oil and then scramble the egg in the pan first, then add the rice and onion and fry it on a high heat until it starts to crisp up. This took about 15 minutes. 

The end result was absolutely delicious. The rice was excellent - we will definitely cook it this way from now on.  The flavours also worked very well together. Soph and my brother-in-law both very much enjoyed it. It's definitely a recipe we'll do again.  None of the ingredients were too complicated or expensive so it would be easy to incorporate into our weekly meal plans from time to time.   

The brocolli was a bit much for me because it infused very very well and basically tasted of chilli ginger. I wouldn't call myself a fan of it but the rice was excellent so I'd eat it again. 

We served it with chicken because it didn't appear to be much food. Next time we make it I think we will increase the quantity a little because there wasn't very much in the end (although a fair amount of the rice flew out of the pan with Soph's enthusiastic stirring). We also try and cook for 4 or 5 people so that we have left-overs in the freezers for lunches during the week.