Four years ago, I started a Japanese cooking anime called Shokugeki No Soma (Food Wars). In the series, they make amazing dishes that make me drool each episode. I know it sounds pretty bizarre since the food is just animation, but it happens and I'm not embarrassed to admit it! After being a loyal fan to the show for so long, I decided to finally recreate a dish from the show. The dish we decided to recreate was the Pineapple Curry Fried Rice.
Fried rice is a simple dish and is loved by people around the world. This dish however, elevates fried rice in a way that I found is very unique. This recipe infuses the sweet pineapple flavors into the rice by baking the fried rice in a hollowed out shell of the pineapple itself! This ingenious idea will definitely impress your dinner party guests and take them through a rollercoaster of flavors. So I hope you've fastened your seat belts because this revamp of fried rice will take your tastebuds on a tasty ride! This recipe is adapted from Episode 22 of Shokugeki No Soma.
Cook Time: 1.5 hours
Difficulty: ★★★☆☆
INGREDIENTS
3 Cups rice
1 Tablespoon turmeric
2 Carrots, diced
2 Husks of boiled corn removed off the core
1 Cup chopped green beans
3 Eggs
½ lb Peeled deveined shrimp
1 Tablespoon curry powder
1 Tablespoon oyster sauce
1½ Tablespoon soy sauce
½ White onion, chopped
½ Cup of thinly sliced scallions
1 Pineapple, hollowed and diced.
Shell of pineapple
Coconut Oil
Pepper
Sea Salt
RECIPE
How to Cut the Pineapple
Chop off the green leaves of the pineapple at the base of the stem horizontally.
Cut the pineapple vertically in half
Slice the meat of the pineapple into ½ inch grid. This will make it easier for you to scoop out the pineapple meat in small chunks.
You should have two hallowed halves of a pineapple.
Use the sea salt and sprinkle it all over both the inside halves of the pineapple
Fried Rice
Cook rice a day before you want to begin cooking. Wash rice and add turmeric into the cooking water of the rice to give the rice a yellow color. Leave in the fridge overnight.
Scramble the eggs in a bowl.
Squeeze and sprinkle pineapple juice, sea salt and pepper over the shrimp
Heat 1 tablespoon of coconut oil in a pan to cook the eggs until they are 75% cooked. Eggs should be wet and runny still. Transfer to a plate.
Preheat oven to 300°F
Add another tablespoon of coconut oil into a a pan on high. Add pineapple, onion, carrot and green beans to the pain. Stir until carrots and onions are tender. Pour out any excess juices.
Add 1 tbsp of oyster sauce
Add rice slowly, making sure there are no clumps
Add curry powder, soy sauce and pepper
When the rice begins to shine and the curry is fragrant, add the egg and scallions until evenly mixed
Pack both halves of the pineapple shell tightly with the fried rice and close them together.
Place the rice-filled pineapple and the marinated shrimp separately onto a baking pan and bake for 20 minutes
Once done, let the shell cool and scoop the rice out of the pineapple onto the plate. Mix the shrimp in and enjoy!
CONCLUSION
Overall this dish was amazing. We had no idea how much of a difference the flavor of the rice would change after baking it in the pineapple shell. If you try this recipe, I highly recommend you try the fried rice before you bake it in the pineapple just so you can see how much the baking process elevates its flavors. One thing that is crucial is adding salt to the pineapple shell before filling it with rice. This prevents the dish from becoming overly sweet as the remaining pineapple juice from the shell seeps through the fried rice. Initially, I thought that this dish was going to be overly sweet. However, it ended up being a perfect balance of sweet and savory! One tip I want to add is to make sure your rice is not too wet going into the whole cooking process. This is why it is important to cook the rice the day before and drain as much liquid as you can when you cook the vegetables. In addition, when you bake it in the pineapple shell, not only will more juice be added to the fried rice, but being cooked in an enclosed container will cause little moisture to be lost from the rice. Too much moister will turn your fried rice into mush and we don't want that! This was such a fun recipe to recreate especially since it was originally adapted from an animated series. The number of aprons this recipe will get shall be...
