Schezwan Rice

Once you know how to make Schezwan sauce, then it is very easy to make schezwan rice or noodles. I use a variety of vegetables, generally whatever is available in the fridge to create a stir fried vegetable based in which I add cooked rice or noodles dish. Then I mix in an appropriate amount of Schezwan sauce. Schezwan rice is once of my favorite Indo-Chinese dishes. I used to eat it weekly or even more frequently when I was in college. There was a small restaurant across from my college where they used to make the most delicious Schezwan rice. It was this  memory that made me experiment with Schezwan sauce ingredients and try to develop that taste. Of course, they added ajinomoto in the restaurant, which is an ingredient that I skip. Instead I use celery in the sauce as well as the stir fry vegetable base.

Ingredients
1 cup rice, cooked
1 tbsp oil
1/2 onion, diced
1 garlic pod, minced
1 celery stick, sliced
1 carrot, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
6-7 green beans, diced
1-3 tbsp schezwan sauce
salt to taste

Method
In a large pan (which can accomodate the cooked rice), heat the oil. Add garlic and onions. Stir fry till the onion startes to look transparent. Then add the vegetables in the order of the vegetable that takes the longest to cook to the one that takes the least amount of time. Here it would be celery, carrots, beans, and bell peppers. It does not take too long to cook each vegetable. The vegetable needs to be cooked, overcooked and soft/mushy. So each vegetable will take about a couple of minutes. Once all the vegetables have beeen cooked, add the cooked rice to it and stir well to mix the vegetables in with the rice. Then add the schezwan sauce to the rice. Add a little at a time to avoid getting it too spicy by adding too much at a time. Best way is to mix the rice and sauce well and taste as you go along. Once you have added enough sauce, adjust the salt. Serve hot.

Tips
If you have used deggi or kasmiri chilli powder in the sauce, you will be able to achieve a slight red color without adding food coloring. When you cook rice, add a little salt to it so that it is well distributed in the rice. Don't add a lot of salt, as the sauce has salt in it too. So final adjustment for the saltiness should be done at the end of the recipe. Cool the rice after cooking it. Try and separate out the grains before the rice cools down. This will help the rice grains stay separate instead of being stuck to each other. 

Schezwan Sauce

Let me start off by saying that this probably has nothing to do with the Sichuan cuisine of China, but is an Indian interpretation of spicy sauce used to make many Indo-Chinese dishes (Indianized version of Chinese food). It is a sauce used to make Shezwan vegetable stir fries as well as rice or noodles. Once you have the sauce prepared then just mix it into your fried rice/noodles/vegetables preparation and lo and behold a simple stir fry gets transformed into something spicy and delicious. As always, I have made this sauce without ajinomoto/MSG, however you can add this in if you want. It is listed as an optional ingredient.  I feel it is the use of celery in this sauce which gives it a unique taste.

Ingredients
1/4 cup onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp garlic
1 tbsp ginger
3 tbps crushed red chillies or 8 whole dry red chillies
1/4 cup celery, finely chopped
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp ketchup
1 tsp vinegar
1/8 tsp black pepper
1 tsp red chilli powder (preferable something like kashmiri chilli powder/deggi mirch)
1 tsp dry parsely
salt to taste
a pinch of ajinomoto/msg (optional)
couple of drops red food coloring (optional)
water to soak chillies

Method
Soak whole red chillies or crushed red chillies in water and boil it for a few minutes. Cool it and strain. If using whole chillies then pulse through the mixer or food processor and mince them.
Heat oil in a small saucepan. Add the garlic, ginger, onions and stir fry for a couple of minutes till the onion is cooked and soft. Then add the celery, the chillies, ketchup, vinegar, black pepper, red chilli powder and parsley. Stir and cook the ingredients for a  minute. Pulse this mixture through the mixer till a coarse paste is formed. Once the paste has been cooked, it is ready to be added to rice or noodles. Add a little bit at a time, mix and taste the rice/noodles. The paste is very spicy and if you add a large amount at a time then it make the entire dish very spicy. Store the extra paste in a glass bottle in the fridge.

Tips
Add a couple of drops of red food coloring once the paste is cool. This will help provide the red color to the rice which is generally seen when you order shezwan rice or noodles in the restaurants. Also, if you want to get the restaurant style taste you may want to add ajinomoto or msg to the paste. If you add this then make sure to taste the paste before adding more salt. However, the paste can be a little salty. When you add it to rice or noodles, then taste the preparation before adding additional salt. Since the paste has so many spices and acidic ingredients, it is better to store it in a glass jar. You can store this paste for a couple of weeks in the fridge.