Mango Basil Fried Rice

This meal was another good example of planning a meal in order to make good use of ingredients already on hand -- we began by identifying a couple of ingredients we wanted to use and then seeking a good way to use them. I mentioned that we had a pound of boneless chicken breast, a local organic staple that we receive most weeks in our Crescent Ridge dairy delivery. Our son Harvey mentioned that we had a mango we should use soon, and my mind went immediately to fried rice.

When I am at a Thai restaurant, the menu always comes down to two choices: chicken-basil stir-fry or mango-chicken fried rice. I love both of these and rarely look at the rest of the menu, basically alternating between these two. While not pretending to have any expertise in this area, I saw this as an opportunity to have it both ways: mango basil fried rice with chicken.

I was not sure where to begin -- that is, what order to fry things. I explored a few different recipe pages, searching on both "fried rice" and "fried rice chicken." There were some subtle differences among sources and I did not follow any recipe strictly. Rather, I made the meal as described below. It required a fair bit of prep time and then just a few minutes of cooking time.

I began by making rice (in this case Thai basmati) two hours before I would start the rest. Earlier would have been even better, but this did give me time to prepare one cup of dry rice (to make three cups total) and to put it in the fridge to cool thoroughly before starting the rest of the preparations.

I then chopped all of these so they would be ready to go in as needed:

• boneless, skinless chicken
• a full bunch of scallions
• two Anaheim hot red peppers
• one mango (there is no easy way to dice this, but with Harvey's help I made it work)
• a fistful of basil

I also made sure the following were on hand:

• two eggs
• soy sauce
• oyster sauce
• I would have included sesame oil if we had any

I heated our indispensable cast-iron skillet to medium-high, added olive oil and tossed in the chicken once the oil was hot. I stirred and scraped quickly -- using a metal with a good edge -- until all pieces were cooked through. I removed all of the chicken to a plate and added a generous slab of butter. I would not have thought of this, but one of the recipe pages convinced me that this would be key.

To the hot butter and oil, I added the scallions and peppers. After stirring them for a minute, I pushed them to the edges of the pan and scrambled the eggs in the center -- stirring vigorously with a fork. I grinded a generous portion of black pepper over all of this. With the oil still hot, I added all of the rice and began turning and scraping frequently. After about two minutes of this, I stirred in the chicken and then the basil and mango. 

Although this is not a terrific photo, it is a case of an
in-progress photo that was better than a final-product
photo could hope to be.

I lowered the heat slightly and continued to stir and scrape until all of this was cooked through. I then removed from the heat and while Pam and Harvey readied the table (and wine), I stirred in just a bit of soy and oyster sauces. It was at this point that I would have stirred in some sesame oil if we had any. One recipe page made clear that smoked sesame oil would be good for finishing, but not for cooking.