Peppery Vegetarian Rice | Wok Wednesdays

On the schedule for this week's Wok Wednesday is this Peppery Vegetarian Rice. It's made with brown rice, two eggs, carrots, shiitake mushrooms, scallions, and pine nuts, all easy ingredients to find. The rice is seasoned with ginger, crushed red pepper flakes, soy sauce, vegetable broth, salt, and white pepper.

At first I though the dish would be fairly simple tasting. There's no garlic, bean sauce, rice wine, and all of the other ingredients (that I have amassed since beginning this adventure) that come together magically in the book's recipes. However, with the first taste, I noticed the ginger combined with the peppers and all of the other ingredients melding together to create an amazing burst of flavor.

This rice is so good. Trust me.

The other cool thing is the egg. I was able to fry the thin egg "pancake" in my wok without it sticking! It worked better than Teflon.

As Grace Young describes in her book, Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge, cooked rice makes a wonderful canvas for a variety of ingredients you have on hand.

The rice is made the day before and refrigerated overnight in keeping with the theme of throwing a bunch of leftovers into the wok to create a delicious impromptu masterpiece.

I had pine nuts in my freezer, which I toasted in the toaster oven (well, actually, I burned the first batch in my toaster oven. I watched the second batch more closely), but you can use chopped toasted cashews, pecans or almonds if that is what you have.

Want to join Wok Wednesdays? Here's the Wok Wednesdays website. You can also join the fun on our Facebook page. You do not need to have a blog. Next up is Chinese Peruvian Filet Mignon!!

You can find the recipe for this rice on Sara Moulton's page.