cook: thai pineapple fried rice

On the 4th of July, I had bought fresh fruit on sale. Strawberries, blueberries, and pineapple. Lots of pineapple 🍍. Finished eating all the berries but not the pineapple. And so I’ve defrosted chicken thighs and studied 2 different recipes. One called for shrimp though it said you could also substitute chicken or tofu. The other recipe omitted protein though it said you could add prawns or chicken. One called for curry powder, soy sauce, fish sauce and said shrimp paste was optional while the other called for no curry powder, oyster sauce and fish sauce and offered 3 different options for sauces using the aforementioned soy and fish sauces but also Gold Mountain, a specific Thai soy sauce, and Maggi. Vegetables were different too. Peas and bell peppers in one and no bell peppers but tomato and green onions in the other. While one Thai cook put raisins and cashews in her pineapple fried rice, neither of those were mentioned at all in the other. And so I’m going to make my pineapple fried rice inspired by both. Chicken instead of shrimp, which I'll marinade in pineapple juice, soy sauce and Maggi. Aromatics like chopped onion and minced garlic of course.

 

Curry powder, turmeric, oyster sauce, fish sauce, and shrimp paste to flavor the protein and rice. Diced bell peppers, celery and carrots, and the white parts of lots of green onions. 

 

No raisins or cashews in mine, but definitely the fresh pineapple and previously cooked jasmine rice from the day before called for in both recipes. 

 

Per my usual, I softened the onions and garlic in hot oil first. And then added the marinated chicken.

 

Vegetables next. And wow was there a lot of liquid I needed to cook off before adding the rice.

 

Yeah a lot of stir frying on medium heat to cook off the steam before finally adding the pineapple and shrimp. The shrimp was an afterthought because I had decided to use shrimp paste in the sauce too and wanted it obvious that shrimp was in this fried rice as well as chicken. And generous sprinklings of green onion and chopped cilantro. And pineapple studding the top which you don't see below because Cecilia popped over for dinner, and I stopped taking pictures.

Okay I've never eaten pineapple fried rice at a beach shack diner in Southeast Asia, nor ever ordered the dish at a Thai restaurant. My recipe was more of what you'd find in Singapore or Malaysia than in Thailand. Cecilia said for my fried rice to be Thai, the fried rice had to be more fiery and less sweet. Meaning use Thai chilies or sauté Thai red curry paste with red chili peppers, garlic, sea salt, lemongrass, turmeric, and shrimp paste that had been freshly pounded in a mortar and pestle. Here's hoping my friend, Bob who is in Laos right now, will bring me a larger and lightweight mortar and pestle than the one I have from some Laotian market.