Week 8: Nasi Goreng

The asian dishes are coming fairly frequently on the roulette wheel! This is something I've heard spoken about time and again, but never tried for myself. Never really know why, but I guess I always stick with the familiar, even though there's nothing in this that would put me off eating it.

Looks good to me! 

But why, upon looking at the recipe am I a little underwhelmed? I feel like there needs to be more flavour in this. Are we a little over the top with adding ingredients these days? But a sauce is not made of soy alone and I feel like this could let the dish down. I admit to drifting away from the stark nature of the recipe and adding some extra bits and pieces from 21st Century nasi goreng recipes to get this one up to speed. 

First off was the omelette.  Fairly easy to do. 

Reminded me of pancakes and anything that reminds me of pancakes is ok in my book. Also I love a good chinese omelette (again with lots of GRAVY/SAUCE!!) see we are obsessed with sauces these days! 

Ready to roll up and cut into strips. 

Sydney's weather last night was wild and crazy. It was also really humid in the kitchen last night so some of my photos became a little blurry and fuzzy from the humidity. You get the idea. Strips of omelette ready to put in the mix. 

Chopping up my carrot! No, its not a photographic trick, the pieces of carrot get larger near the end of the photo, I blame my short attention span and the job of cutting the carrot became a little tedious, so the pieces of carrot became larger. 

Onion and shallots ready to go. Love all these ingredients by the way. So fresh. 

Sautéing the onion, garlic and carrots. The carrot size was no big, they mixed in well with the chunks of onion I'd chopped. Consistent sizing in vegetables is important! 

Whilst I was doing this the sou chef made a return to Kitchen Chad and was chopping the meat and doing the dogsbody work, thats right, peeling prawns. 

We were a little freaked out by this guy, he had really big beady eyes. We skinned and ate him anyways. 

And he was tasty. 

Good job sous chef, the prawns look good, no poop or shells, excellent! 

The chicken went in first to brown. 

Then the prawns (see ? so steamy in the kitchen last night! ) 

While the prawns were cooking we chopped up the chinese cabbage, which was so lovely, I love the slight bitter edge the cabbage has. Well really, I just love cabbage regardless. 

This is where we got a little creative and added some extra bits and pieces. Also included ginger and shrimp paste. Love that shrimp paste! Reminds me of pad thai. 

Time to spoon the rice in. 

Suddenly this dish became massive and looked like I'd pulled it out of the "feed an army" category. 

Added the secret sauce, cabbage, shallots and egg slices. 

Once the cabbage had cooked a little bit it was time to dish up! 

I'm also crazy about fresh chilli, I pretty much put it on top of everything, sans my oatmeal in the morning. 

Nasi goreng was great, and really you could make this with whatever veggies and meat you had around the house, it's a really quick and easy dish. I recommend it, but don't forget to add extra SAUCE!