Fried rice with pineapple

(In 't Nederlands? Even scrollen)

Wouldn't it be fun to have your own personal rice-filled pineapple bowl? As it is I filled the two halves and put the remainder of the rice in an ordinary bowl. The boys thought it was fun to refill the pineapples from the bowl. You won't believe the amount of food that disappears at the moment! There is some correlation between food going down and seams of clothing going up...

I didn't measure my ingredients very carefully, I just added what I thought looked colorful and in harmony with each other. The pineapple is scooped out, leaving a inner rim of about 1/2 inch placed on a baking sheet and roasted 10-15 minutes in a preheated oven 350F. In the meantime combine the rice filling as follows:

Fragrant rice:

1 fresh pineapple

See above for directions, you'll only need half of the pineapple flesh in cubes for this dish! The other half of the pineapple cubes can be used for the accompanying vegetable dish -or breakfast ;-).

vegetable oil

sweet corn

peas (fresh/frozen)

small amount of cooked ham, thinly sliced

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 tbs grated fresh ginger

2-3 garlic cloves

cooked cold white long grain rice

1-2 tbs light soy sauce

1/2 tbs rice wine / sherry

an omelet made from 2 eggs, in thin stripes*

for garnish and extra flavour: 1 red chili pepper thinly sliced and coriander leaves

Heat oil in a frying pan, add garlic and ginger until light golden and fragrant, add ham, corn, peas, bell pepper and stir fry for about 2 minutes. Add cooked rice, soy sauce, sherry and pineapple, lower heat to medium and stir for another 5-10 minutes. Make sure you keep moving the rice or it will stick. Adjust flavour with salt and pepper. Fill the roasted pineapple halves with the rice and garnish with omelet stripes, chili and koriander.

* Instead of making a separate omelet I really like this way of making fried rice:

Heat 1 or 2 ts of -sesame-oil in a wok, tip in 2 beaten eggs mixed with 1 teaspoon of sesame oil, stir like crazy while you add the cold rice. This way the egg will coat the rice grains adding an almost sweet flavour. You will have to cook the other ingredients separately adding them after you've put in the rice.