Thai pineapple fried rice

I’ve always liked cooking a dish and then serving it in the ingredient’s ‘shell’. It seems like such a fun process, not to mention making the dish look more appealing and would probably enhance the flavours as well. That’s exactly what I did with this delicious Thai pineapple fried rice.

I found a HUGE and cheap whole pineapple which was ripe and smelt delicious at Chadstone recently. At $2.50, it was a bargain for the amount of enjoyment I got (and will continue getting) out of it. It has literally transformed my whole kitchen and living room into a pineapple smelling paradise that has almost tricked my mind into believing it might not actually be winter!

Yuye looked up how to grow your own pineapples which actually sounded plausible, but probably not for this cold weather. When I buy this delicious fruit again come Spring time, I will attempt to grow some! Maybe.

The pineapple I picked had rainbow colours on the skin. It was so beautiful, especially when I tried playing with the colours in Lightroom. Here’s a photo of it with the blacks and saturation cranked up.

Cutting the pineapple wasn’t as hard as I thought because it was very ripe, but it was slightly more difficult getting the flesh out of the shell while keeping the shell unharmed. In the end, my kitchen counter was a mess with pineapple juice everywhere. What I did was using a serrated knife and cutting around the edges of the halved pineapple, then using a metal spoon to slowly dig the flesh out. Has anyone else tried to do this and has a trick you don’t mind sharing?

As I didn’t have fresh red chillies in the pantry, I just substituted it with chilli paste which worked fine.

Note: over night rice is a lot better for fried rice dishes because through the cooking process, the rice starches are brought out and freshly made rice tend to go soft and gluggy a lot quicker.

Thai pineapple fried rice
Makes 2 servings
Adapted from Rasa Malaysia

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups over night rice (or roughly 200g)
• 2 cloves of finely chopped garlic
• Quarter large pineapple or half small pineapple (roughly 100g), cut into small pieces
• 6 large prawns, cut into small pieces
• 1 tbsp fish sauce or oyster sauce
• 1 tsp shrimp paste (this can be purchased in a butter like block from Asian grocery stores) – don’t use too much of this as it is quite strong in flavour and smell
• 1 tbsp pineapple juice (you will have a lot of this if you bought a whole pineapple)
• 2 stalks coriander, finely chopped, with a few whole leaves to garnish
• A whole red chilli or 1/2 tbsp chilli paste
• A small handful of cashew nuts, roughly chopped (optional)
• 1 tbsp fried shallots as garnish (optional)
• Cooking oil

Instructions

1. Heat a wok with cooking oil to medium high. Fry garlic, chilli paste/red chilli and shrimp paste until aromatic (roughly 2 minutes).
2. Fry prawns until half cooked or just turned colour.
3. Add in rice, fish sauce or oyster sauce, pineapples and pineapple juice and stir through until mixed and rice is heated through. Taste and add in extra seasoning to your liking.
4. Add in chopped coriander and cashew nuts, quickly stir through and cook for further 1 minute then plate up.
5. Top with coriander leaves, fried shallots and a few bits of red chilli as garnish. Serve immediately.

Question time: Do you like pineapples? If you had a whole pineapple, what recipe would you make? I still have more than half a pineapple left so need to make something with them!