I first tried something similar to this when my boss and his family invited me and the rest of the staff to a lunch at their house. They served us a lot of appetizers such as baguette toasts topped with bacon bits and melted cheese and mallorcan olives among others. For the main course, they served steak with a cream sauce, salad and a herbed rice which I liked so much I decided to make something similar to it at home.

Herbed fried rice

This is a very versatile recipe. I used a pack of rice with different variety in it which I buy from my local grocery store. It is a mixture of wild rice and basmati rice. But if ever you don’t have it or can’t find it where you are, I don’t see any reason you can’t use Jasmine rice, Basmati rice, Thai rice or even pre-boiled long-grained rice.  For the other ingredients, you can use either bacon, york ham or Spanish ham. Also, you can use either moscatel raisins or sultanas. You can even add pine nuts if you’d like. For the herb, I used dried rosemary but I don’t see any reason you can’t use other herbs.

You can use this as side dish to any meat, poultry or fish dish. You can even use this recipe to add some life to cold and left-over cooked rice!

Ingredients:

Rice (prepared according to package directions)

Bacon strips (or york ham, Parma ham, Spanish Iberic ham, etc)

Moscatel raisins or sultanas (previously soaked in water then strained)

Dried rosemary

salt and pepper to taste

olive oil

finely minced garlic

Directions:

1. Prepare rice according to package directions. When cooked, strain and let it cool. Set aside.

2. In a skillet, heat some olive oil. Saute the bacon strips.

3.  Add the finely minced garlic.

4. Once the garlic already changed color, add the raisins and a pinch of dried rosemary.

5. Season with pepper and salt.

6. Pour in the rice and keep on stirring so it won’t stick to the pan.

7. Cook until the rice is heated through. Turn off the heat and serve hot as side dish or as a dish itself.

Enjoy!