Easy Peasy Garlic Fried Rice

When I was in UIUC, I had an american friend named Jennifer Cassidy. We had a lot of classes together, and we were about the same height (she's considered short, and so was I). On some days, I would hang out at her place in between classes (coz her apartment was only 2 blocks or so away from the ME building) and we would grab some lunch. She really liked Fried Rice, and since I was the only asian she knows, she would ask me to fry up some for her.
During that time, I wasn't so good at cooking fried rice coz I didnt have lots of experience (yet). I remember the first one turning out okay, but a little sticky. Actually most of my attempts didnt turn out like the ones sold at the chinese restaurants or the ones my mom makes. They all turned out a little too sticky. It took me awhile to figure out that to make the best fried rice, you'd have to use last night's cooked rice, coz then it would have dried up abit.

Anyways.

A few days ago I ran out of shallots, so I decided to make fried rice with only garlic. Hey hey it turned out yummeh :) Reminded me of the garlic fried rice that you could order at the japanese restaurants. My kids loved it so much, they asked me to make it for lunch, 3 days in a row. I stopped making it coz my husband finally bought some shallots.

I'm going to give you the basic recipe, which results in plain, white fried rice, but you can jazz it up with soy sauce or chilli sauce or whatever seasonings you prefer, and play around with the vegetables. The ones I used were whatever I had in my fridge.

Easy Peasy Garlic Fried Rice

Ingredients
2 cups cooked rice (preferrably last night's)
as much garlic as you like, roughly chopped (I used half a head)
one carrot , cut into tiny cubes
one celery stick sliced into tiny chunks
1/4 red and yellow pepper diced small
1/8 cabbage sliced into thin strips like for coleslaw
4 tablespoons cooking oil (I use sunflower)
2 eggs
salt and pepper to taste

Method
Heat up oil over medium heat in a pan/wok that is big enough.
Saute garlic till half cooked
Add in the vegetables, fry till garlic is roasted and fragrant
Add in the rice and cabbages, stir to mix well.
Season with salt and pepper, taste till to your liking
Push rice aside in the pan/wok, break eggs and scramble till fully cooked.
Mix well into rice.
Serve warm.

Sorry, no pictures this time. My camera's lens is a little wonked up. Perhaps it caught wind of my desire to purchase a new camera.

As usual, suggestions for variation:
To pre-season your rice, cook it in stock, or use leftover chicken rice or briyani.
You can add color by adding soy sauce (brown), chilli or tomato sauce (red), a pinch of tumeric (yellow).
You can add taste by using the things mentioned above, or ground up (or not) ikan bilis, anchovies (saute it together with the garlic), broken up ikan masin (salted fish).
Of course you can add meat. Saute them together with the vegetables. make sure they are fully cooked before adding the rice.
Cikgu Munah, my mom in law, would ground birds eye chillies together with the garlic. Spicy as hell, but yummeh!

It took about 10-15 minutes to cook up everything, not including preparation. I think this could easily be made for the lunchbox if you cook the rice and chop up the vegetables the night before *winks at aliya*.

Happy trying and tell me how you made yours and how it turned out! :)