Comfort Food: Thai Edition

Working at a thai restaurant has its definite benefits - free food, a well-developed appetite for spicy things, money - but last night, I would have put "learning how to make basil fried rice" at the top of any list of things I enjoy about my job.

As you may know, we just got pelted with about 17 inches of snow from a storm that lasted the better part of two days.  Despite the temperature and the high winds, the Boyfriend and I spent much of our time outside helping dig his bandmate's car out of the snow and voluntarily trekking across the city just to see what Minneapolis looks like at 6 PM on a Saturday night.  (We both work jobs that mean we've not gotten a regular Saturday night off in years, although with most of the shops in our part of town closed by 5 PM, we got a bit of a skewed impression)  We're naturalized Minnesotans like that.

All this pushing, and digging, and jumping (over plow-driven drifts), and shuffling left us absolutely exhausted by the time we got home at 7 PM.  Like, wanting-to-go-to-bed exhausted.  In this kind of situation, fried rice is like a SWAT team bursting through the door to rescue you.  Like North Korean propaganda videos being set to funk music.  I tell you, it was made for this.

Fried rice has a lot of different varieties.  In a standard thai restaurant, it is usually done plain with a little seasoning sauce (think soy sauce), with a handfull of yellow curry powder, with several dollops of sri racha sauce, or with lots of pineapple and other sweet goodies.  However, its true perfection is only realized in its "Holy Basil" incarnation: garlic, onions, garlic, scrambled egg, seasoning sauce, garlic, a pinch of sugar, powdered chilis, and a ton of fresh thai basil.  It's greasy, warm, savory, spicy, and wonderfully fragrant.  In other words: comfort food of the first order, especially when garnished with some chopped fresh tomatoes (hooray for local hydroponic farms!) and followed with homemade sorta-cafe mochas for dessert.

Ok, Story Time Over:
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup uncooked rice
2-4 eggs, depending on how much you like egg
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. vegetable or soy bean oil
2-3 tbsp. soy sauce
1 1/2 to 2 cups fresh basil, or more if you just really like basil (the grocery store was closed by the time we got home, so I used about 1/5 cup dried)
1/4 to 1 tsp. of crushed dried chili peppers, to taste (think of "medium" as 1/2 tsp, "hot" as 1 tsp, and "thai hot" as 3/4 to 1 tbsp.)

Start the rice in your rice cooker/pot.  Once that's done, do the garlic in the oil over medium heat, being careful not to brown it; crack your eggs into the pan, and scramble them with your spatula; toss the onions in for 30 seconds (or add them with the garlic if you don't like the taste of partially-raw onion); once the eggs have set, add your rice, sugar, salt, and soy sauce, and toss until everything is mixed well and the rice has turned a golden brown; add the basil and chili peppers, and keep tossing until the basil wilts.  Enjoy immediately, and retire to the couch with sorta-mochas and a (mac)book.

Reverse Leftovers.

Tonight was one of those thankfully-rare occurrences where I  had a short time to turn out something better-than-decent without the help of our neighborhood grocery store.  The Boyfriend is in the last few weeks of his semester, and in need of a break from AutoCAD, said he'd be home in 30 minutes...30 minutes after I'd finished licking clean the tupperware from yesterday's leftovers.  Why on earth would this be a problem, you ask?  Since we live a few blocks from the co-op (grocery store), I hardly ever make the big, cart-busting hauls my mom did when I was growing up, and the fact that it's 10 degrees outside really, really disincentivized me to leave the building.

Who, me? Lazy?  Probs.  My dad, perhaps more charitably than he should when I relate these kinds of adventures, says I'm just practicing a classic principal of Italian cooking called "never throw anything out."  

On examination, the two magic bags of holding cupboard and refrigerator produced a tall can of garbanzo beans, lots of garlic, an extremely large carrot, a smitch of green goddess dressing, a romaine heart, and flour tortillas left over from last night's black bean wraps.  Trying not to be reminded that getting the same kind of thing two nights in a row feels a bit lame, here's what I came up with:

In a saute pan over medium heat, heat three or four glugs of olive oil and 4 to 5 cloves of garlic, minced.  Once the pan smells delicious, and before the garlic has a chance to burn, toss in a substantial amount of ground black pepper, and a couple pinches of salt, plus the drained 28 oz. can of chickpeas.  Give it a good stir, and let it cook for a bit until the chickpeas are soft and will mash into a chunky paste, rather than the crumble you'd get if you mashed them straight out of the can.

While that's going on, chop the lettuce as you would for any salad, and shred the carrot using the big holes on your box grater.  Once the garbanzos are the right consistency, toss them in a bowl with the carrot shreds and go to town with the potato masher, leaving a mix of smashed and partly-whole beans.  Spoon this into your wraps, along with the chopped lettuce that you've hopefully tossed with the goddess dressing, and there you go.  Easier than Ikea.

The Boyfriend pronounced his approval, and I hope that they made him just a little bit less stressed out and comforted on the inside.  He needs it this time of year.