Joe was on-call Monday night, so I had been trying to figure out what I was going to eat for dinner when I remembered that I had some leftover brown rice from our tofu dinner the night before and a whole bunch of vegetables that I could add to it. This is the perfect way to use up bits and pieces of vegetables from another dish and make it into something new.
Almost any sort of vegetables that you have on hand can work and you can adjust the soy sauce, chili garlic sauce, garlic, and ginger to taste or add other ingredients altogether. I wasn't terribly concerned about authenticity. I haven't entered it into a recipe calculator, but I imagine this is pretty healthy with the brown rice and all of the vegetables. The amount of oil could conceivably be reduced even further.
This was such an easy and flavorful meal that I can't believe I hadn't tried something similar before. I was able to get home from work and have dinner on the table within 20 minutes with minimal preparation. Casual Kitchen has a great blog post on How To Use Leftover Ingredients and the different incarnations they can take. Check it out!
Kira's Veggie Fried Rice
serves 1 with a leftover lunch portion
Ingredients
2 tsp peanut oil
3 tsp fresh ginger, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 cups brown rice, cooked and cooled
3 scallions, chopped
4 cups spinach, chopped
1/2 cup mushrooms
1/2 cup frozen peas
1 egg, scrambled
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp Thai chili garlic sauce
Directions
Heat oil on high heat in a large skillet or wok. Add garlic and ginger and stir until browned.
Turn the heat down to medium-high and add rice and vegetables, stirring until spinach is wilted and vegetables are cooked, about 5 minutes.
Make a well in the center of the rice mixture and pour the egg into the well. Let it sit for one minute and then mix into the rice until cooked.
Add soy sauce and Thai chili garlic sauce and stir until mixed thoroughly.
Serve immediately.
