My mother is a huge Ping Coombes fan. Strange since she doesn’t eat meat, but loves the lady’s food. During her season of Master Chef, my mother was rooted to the tv and she would not move till the credits at the end.

When the season ended, my mother was really sad, but when she heard that there was a cookbook in the pipelines, we had a new goal to get our hands on a copy.

Do you have any idea how difficult it was to get my hands on a copy of Ping’s book. EXTREMELY.

South African books stores had no idea what I was talking about, meaning that I had to turn to my old faithful Amazon to get my hands on a copy. I was very impatient to get my hands on this book that I pressed overnight express. Saw the total, fainted, regained consciousness , squeezed my eyes tightly closed and pressed pay and prayed with all the bones in my body that SARS would not hunt me down, because that would mean confessing to my mother that I used Amazon more often than she knew.

Thank my lucky stars I went under the SARS radar. It is the first time that a UPS guy arrived at my door with something for me. I love the UPS guy as the advert on tv says.

Although I have had my hands on this, as soon as it was published, I never felt the urge to try to make anything from it. I mean most dishes requires oyster sauce and only this past month did I actually manage to get my hands on a bottle of this sauce. Normally I just turn the page whenever I see the ingredients ask for oyster sauce.

Seeing as I had oyster sauce and it had to be used within two weeks of opening, I decided to whip out the pink book and try my hands at some of the recipes.

To do with the curry I decided to make a fried rice dish and believe it or not the supermarket actually had shiitake mushrooms. I have no idea how to pronounce this so when I asked for help in the fresh produce section I asked do they have “ shit take” mushrooms and I said it with a straight face like it was the most normal thing for me to do early on a Sunday morning.

My verdict I loved this, considering that it had chopped up omelette in, I chopped it up really thinly so that I couldn’t see it when I ate the rice. I asked my dad and all he was worried about was the red chilli that was garnishing the dish and he told me that this Indian rice was really strong he was growing chest hair all over again. He was thrown for a curve ball when I told him it’s a dish from Malaysia and not India.

Ingredients:

• 2 x cups cooked rice.
• 4 x shiitake mushrooms, diced.
• 3 x tbsp. oil.
• 2 x eggs, lightly beaten.
• 2 x spring onions, finely chopped.
• 2 x cloves garlic, crushed.
• 5 x ounces raw peeled prawns.
• 1 x tbsp. oyster sauce.
• 2 x tsp soy sauce.
• 1 x red chilli, finely sliced.
• 1 x onion, thinly sliced.
• Pepper.

Method:

• Heat a little oil in a pan.
• Add the egg mixture and cook till it turns into a omelette.
• Gently roll up and flip onto a plate to cool and slice thinly.
• Heat the remaining oil in a wok.
• Add the onion and garlic and saute till the onions are soft.
• And prawns and mushrooms and cook till the prawns turn pink.
• Add rice and mix thoroughly.
• Allow the rice to heat through.
• Add the oyster sauce, soy sauce and pepper.
• Toss to coat everything with the sauces.
• Fold in the slices of omelette.
• Sprinkle with green onion and chilli and serve.