Pork Fried Rice vs. a Ghostbusting Monkey

Last night, we tried a new pork fried rice recipe. Around here, fried rice is a contentious, hot-button issue, like abortion or the Real Ghostbusters vs. those knock-off cartoon ones with the big monkey (in depth expose: here).

We like our fried rice, and of the approximately 850 restaurants in the area, only one or two make it good. Most of our homemade versions have been ok, not great.


This new recipe added a few quirks. First, lime. After frying the onions, garlic, pork, rice, eggs, soy sauce (all basic), you take some fresh lime quarters, and juice it up a bit. This was nice. I wonder if limes mind being the garnish of the world. I hope not, because they're quite good at it.

Beyond limes, this recipe suggests chopping up some chile peppers and tossing them on as an additional garnish. Or, an additional way to maim your tongue when you foolishly opt against deseeding. Lesson learned. Maybe. No, probably not.

So the mix of lime and hellfire made an otherwise bland rice pretty good. Maybe Emeril had something with that irritating "Bam!" schtick.

(One epilogue on lime safety: should you come home later, hungry, and see that tupperware with what little remains from dinner, make sure you notice there are still two lime quarters in there before microwaving. The citrus fruits don't enjoy the microwave. I'm not sure what happened, just that some form of implosion took place. I still ate the rice, of course, but I had to nudge around the small green carcasses in the bowl.)