Bagoong fried rice

Fried rice seasoned with fried shrimp paste and served with raw green mango against it.

Not vegetarian — contains shrimp paste.

Ingredients

• 800 g cold cooked rice, grains separated
• 4 tablespoons shrimp paste
• 6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 4 tablespoons oil
• 2 green mangoes, in matchsticks
• 4 siling labuyo, chopped
• 3 spring onions, sliced

Method

1. FRY THE PASTE UNTIL IT STOPS SMELLING OF ITSELF. Shrimp paste straight from the jar is raw and aggressive; four minutes in oil over a medium heat, pressed against the pan, turns it darker, drier and nutty. This is the step that decides whether the dish is savoury or simply pungent.
2. The rice must be cold and a day old, with the grains loose.
3. Fry the garlic in the oil until pale gold, 2 minutes, then the onion, 3 minutes.
4. Shrimp paste in and fried as above. Sugar in for the last 30 seconds -- it is not there to sweeten but to take the hard edge off the salt.
5. Heat up to high. Rice in all at once. Press it flat, leave it 30 seconds, turn. Repeat for 4 to 5 minutes until every grain has gone brown-pink and some have toasted.
6. TASTE BEFORE ADDING ANYTHING ELSE. Shrimp paste varies enormously between jars and this is very easy to oversalt. There is no fish sauce and no soy in this dish on purpose.
7. Chillies and spring onion folded through off the heat.
8. THE RAW GREEN MANGO IS PART OF THE DISH, not a garnish. Pile it on the side of each plate -- sharp and crunchy against a rich salty rice -- and do not mix it in, because it wilts in the heat within a minute.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes