Thursday Night In

When I scout recipes for weeknight cooking, I usually search for those that are both simple and  delicious.  Having quite a bit of leftover rice from my stir fry on Monday, and in the mood for more Asian style cooking, I knew I was looking for a fried rice recipe.  So when I stumbled upon this recipe for shrimp and egg fried rice with napa cabbage, I was ready to give it a try.

Close up of the finished product complete with scallion and peanut garnish

I often head over to Food Network's website to find new recipes and videos about how to perform certain cooking techniques.  I also appreciate that the recipes are labeled by level of difficulty so I know when I might be getting in over my head. 

My definition of an easy recipe is adding 5 to 9 ingredients together without too much chopping. Perhaps this is a naive view, but amongst my friends, most of us spent college and our young adult lives making ramen or boxed mac n cheese and most of us are short on time.  

The point of this rambling, is that a recipe labeled "easy" still takes a bit of effort and often more prep time than allotted.  For the fried rice, I had to do a lot of chopping and cutting and prepping.  See below.

Now, in the recipe's defense, once you start cooking something in a wok there is little time to finish your prep so everything really does need to be ready before you turn on the stove....

Even though I have complained a bit about the prep time, I can't complain about the final product.  The fried rice was delicious!  I ended up adding some red pepper flakes to the shrimp for a bit of heat, but really liked the simple flavors.  

So many peas! But I love peas in the winter, so no complaints from me

Also, quick tip for dealing with napa cabbage. It does not have a "core" like other round cabbages, so all you need to do is cut the white part of the bottom of the cabbage off, about 3-4 inches from the base of the cabbage in order to use it.  You can head here to find answers to all your other cabbage cooking questions.

Have you ever gotten yourself into a recipe that was more work than you anticipated?

-Thank goodness it's almost Friday!