Pumpkin Rice (南瓜饭)

Submitted this photo for DMBLGiT Decmber 2007, the round-up gallery is available here.

(updated on 9 Dec 07)

Another rice dish... I should be reducing carb intake in my diet but just could not resist this tasty rice. This is one of the mum's flavoured-rice dishes that I grown up with, along with yam rice, snake (long) bean rice, and so forth. We were poor then (still not rich now though) and mum cooked such rice regularly as it is relatively economy to feed a family of eight. I am eating it now... should I get another bowl? Something missing... soup!

I have modified mum's recipe a little and cooked with what I had on hand. You may use short grain (sushi) rice or the mixture of long grain rice(½) with glutinous rice(½) for different texture.

Ingredients (4 servings):

2 cup of rice, washed and drained

350g pumpkin, diced with peel on

200g diced hotdog (or minced meat)

3 dried shiitake mushroom, soaked and diced

2 tbsp dried shrimps, soaked and drained

2 bulb shallot, sliced thinly

2 cloves garlic, sliced thinly

1 tsp oyster sauce

1-2 tbsp cooking oil

2½ cups water (+½ cup for softer rice)

Salt to taste

Pepper to taste

½ cup chopped coriander for garnish

Directions:

1. Heat oil in non-stick pan, fry shallot and garlic until lightly brown. Remove shallot and garlic, reserve the oil in the pan.
2. Use the same pan, saute pumpkin until the surface is lightly brown or caramelised. Remove pumpkin from pan.
3. Add mushroom, dried shrimp and hotdog in the pan. Stir fry until lightly brown, then stir in rice. Cook for further 1-2 minutes.
4. Add in water, oyster sauce, salt and pepper. Stir well.
5. Transfer rice into rice cooker and continue the cooking process. When the rice is almost done, gently stir in the pumpkin. Continue to cook until the rice is done, let rice stay in the rice cooker for further 10 minutes.
6. Stir in fried shallot and garlic, garnish with chopped coriander. Serve warm, ideally with a bowl of hot soup.

Some useful tips:

• If cooking yam rice, add in the yam in step 4 above.
• If cooking snake (long) bean rice, skip step 2 and add chopped beans (1.5cm) in step 4 above.
• You may add in pinch of five-spices powder and small amount of dark soy sauce for these two types of rice, if desired.