Chinese Olive Fried Rice (Kow Pad Nam Leab )

This fried rice recipe has a different twist from more common fried rice because of the flavor of the olives.
The chinese olives taste quite different from Mediterranean style olives.

2 Servings
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3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup ground pork
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
3 cups cooked rice
10-15 sprigs cilantro, chopped
10  salty Chinese olives, chopped
1 wedge lime Optional
1 teaspoon fish sauce Optional
cucumber, sliced Optional
There are two steps in making fried rice. First cook the rice then stir fried the rice with seasonings. If you have leftover rice that is not too mushy, that works well too. The key to making great fried rice is drier rice and retaining high heat while cooking. So, cook some rice that is drier than normal.

Pit the olives. The pit should just slide off easily. Chop the olives into small pieces.

Prepare your rice by fluffing it. If your rice is cold heat it up in microwave, then fluff it. Super hot rice doesn’t work well for fried rice. But somewhat warm is great because cool rice will rob the heat from the wok.

Over medium heat, add oil to a wok. Quickly add chopped garlic and stir. Add ground pork and chopped Chinese olives. At this point, the wok cools off a little. Stir the mixture. If there is a lot of juice coming out from the pork, keep stirring until the juice is gone. This will give the wok a chance to get hotter again. When the pork is cooked, add rice and stir. Gently break up small clumps of rice with the back of your spatula to coat it with the olives. Your rice will turn purplish at this point. Taste and see if the fried rice is not too salty. If it is too salty, add more rice. Conversely you can also add more fish sauce, but I normally find the salty Chinese olives contribute enough salt.

Put the fried rice in a plate. Sprinkle the chopped cilantro on top. Add a wedge of lime and cucumber on the side. Serve with pepper lime fish sauce if you like it hot.

Tips and substitutions
You can substitute ground chicken or turkey for the ground pork.

You can try substituting nicoise olives for the Chinese ones, but you will find that there’s a distinct difference in flavor that you will miss.

Use fresh cilantro – it makes a big difference.

The key to cooking great fried rice is the temperature of the wok. As ingredients get added, the wok cools a little. So add a little at a time. Keep the wok on high heat at all times.