The Country with Little Takeout- Chicken Fried Rice!!!

Morocco is the country of little takeout. I'm quite certain it exists in the cities... I had Pizza Hut to-go when I was in Agadir last week, and I've seen it in Marrakesh too. The food is definitely good here, but I really do love my Chinese takeout. That is one thing I have to get when I go home along with NY Pizza, Italian food, and a bagel for breakfast.

...but for now, I do what anyone who has a dire craving for something completely inaccessible does... I make it myself! So I decided tonight was a good night for Chicken Fried Rice.

Now, this is not a terribly difficult dish, so don't get too excited when I say I made it from scratch. It contains pretty basic ingredients. To flavor the ingredients, I used soy sauce and sesame oil. Here's how I did it...

First thing, I made the rice. I used ruz glasse (pretty normal rice for you Americans, but we have 2 kinds here... the kind that gets soggy, and the kind that doesn't get as soggy. No sticky rice unfortunately). I put it in my pressure cooker 2-1 water-rice. I let it boil, covered the pressure cooker and then estimated about 6 minutes. When it finished, the water wasn't all completely absorbed, but I wanted slightly undercooked rice anyway. I did leave it on to boil for another minute. The water wasn't completely gone, but like I said, no overcooking of the rice... It should be just about done, but firm still.

Next, I drained the rice and put it in a flat-ish bowl. I wanted it to dry out a bit. The air is pretty dry here, so that doesn't take long... I just left it out a bit and mixed it around so the bottom would dry.

Here in small-town Morocco, we get our chicken from the chicken guy who either already has a stock of freshly killed chicken or he kills a chicken as you wait... What a service! :-P Eewww. I'm carnivore to the bone and I even think it's kinda gross to watch. Anyway, cut the meat off the bones and slice it into fairly small pieces. I put some vegi oil in a pan and started to fry the little bits of chicken. As it cooked, I added a splash of soy sauce and sesame oil.

After the chicken cooked (slightly brown on the edges), I sent it aside in a bowl. I then took my chopped vegis (I used onion, green pepper and carrots but it's your call) and threw them into the oil and fried them for a minute. After they started looking done I threw in more sesame oil, and soy sauce and then the rice went in. I poured a bunch of soy sauce on top of the rice and kept mixing it around until it browned from soy sauce and cooking. Make sure to keep it from burning on the bottom of the pan. (though I love it when the rice gets kinda crispy brown... that's more than okay!)

I love a bit of egg in my fried rice! So I scooted as much rice out of the center as I could, added a tad more vegi oil and cracked 2 eggs in there (I made a ton- usually 1 suffices). Once they started to cook on the bottom, I mixed them in with some of the rice and kept stirring everything around.

Finally when it was all hot and browned and yummy smelling, I added back in the chicken.

Result? Really tasty... I did have to add a tad bit more soy sauce later, but not much. Next time I would do it the same way, but maybe add more vegis and not so much rice. Also, I heard there is a trick using chicken broth for added flavor. I like the way this tastes though. Check out the photo below. Looks good, doesn't it?