Recette #59: curried fried rice inspirée

 On a recent road trip to New Brunswick and la belle provence Québec I had some knockout meals. Surprisingly, the most memorable meals were not in the main destination, Quebec City, but in Fredericton NB, and inspiring today’s recipe, in Rivière du Loup, Québec.

A fantastic little restaurant called L’innocent had a terrific vegetarian curried fried rice and I have tried to recapture its essence here, with some intentional (and some not-so-intentional) twists to make it my own, et plus « rubbishy ».

(Sample of menu with inspirational fried rice at the end of the list, reproduced sans permission.)

Ingredients:

There are some definite differences already between my experimental inspired version and the restaurant’s original: I’m using brown basmati rice, not white; whatever vegetables were in the fridge missing celery and adding red cabbage and cauliflower; I have no seeds (pumpkin and sunflower) but using chopped walnuts and almonds (I can’t recall what noix they included); I’m using drizzled maple syrup instead of honey; I’ve only got dried prunes but they had raisins; I’m pretty sure their tofu cubes were sautéed not baked. And who knows what else I’ve inadvertently changed!

Directions:

First, get some rice cooking. I’m making brown rice and using the method explained in Recipe #1:

While simultaneously baking my extra firm tofu cubes in canola oil at 375F convection:

While they’re cooking to perfection (both about 30 minutes), prepare your mise en place:

Chop your veggies,

Chop and toast your nuts (and seeds if you have ´’em)…

And chop your dried fruit, I’m using prunes.

When your rice and tofu are done, let’s get cooking!

Heat some neutral flavoured oil in a large fry pan:

Add your chopped vegetables:

And stir fry until the vegetables start to soften and brown/singe/caramélisé a bit—that’s the maillard reaction making everything so tasty in the pan:

When the vegetables are fantastic, add the rice and probably more oil and maybe a bit of water to prevent burning and sticking:

Add a good amount of curry powder—nothing fancy here, just regular bright yellow curry powder:

Stir everything together adding more oil and/or water if necessary. I added a bit too much water and the rice started to cook more and became a little mushy but c’est correct!

Add the roasted tofu cubes, nuts, and dried fruit and combine and cook through. Add more curry powder to taste:

Et voilà, c’est prêt pour manger!

Add a generous sprinkling of good feta cheese and an even more generous drizzle of maple syrup as you serve:

C’est si bon, et merci beaucoup L’innocent ❤️