Thanks to the generosity of two lovely ladies who also happen to be killer chefs, I recently found myself with an embarrassment of gorgeous large raw shrimp. And when a bounty like that falls into your lap... you simply resign yourself... happily... to a shrimp orgy.
First, in response to being around a number of people with colds, I looked in the fridge and decided that a very garlic-and-ginger-heavy fried rice was the way to go. As with any stir-fried dish, prep is everything...
So I started to chop... a bunch of scallions, a half an orange bell pepper. Then I microplaned about an inch of ginger and 6 cloves of garlic. I got out, and opened, the soy sauce, some homemade chicken stock I'd thawed, the sriracha, and some two-day old brown rice. (By the way, cooked rice that's at least a day old is best for fried rice.) I also had my "free" peanut oil... drained from a jar of natural peanut butter.
I shelled and deveined the shrimp and, since they were pretty big, I cut them in half. I cracked two eggs into a bowl and stirred them. All seemed ready... but I did one more quick inventory, because a hot wok waits for no man!
I started to heat the wok. After about a minute, I poured in and swirled about 2 T of the peanut oil. Once it began to shimmer, I added the peppers and the whites of the scallion, and stir fried just until the peppers started to blister. Then, in went the garlic and ginger. This only fried for about a minute or so (I hate browned garlic), then I poured all of this out of the wok and into a bowl.
Next I tossed a bit more oil into the wok, and then the rice. As soon as the rice was hot, out it came, and into the bowl with the pepper mix. One more drop of oil and the shrimp went into the wok. After a minute, when they started to turn pink, in went the eggs for a fast scramble. Then the pepper/rice mix was tossed back in along with a shot of soy, some sriracha, and a bit of stock.
That's it! It seems frantic, but if everything's at hand and ready to go... just tell everybody to stand back and fry away. And, of course... garnish with chopped peanuts and the scallion greens.
Another benefit, besides great flavor: the garlic, ginger, and sriracha will keep winter ills at bay!