Meera Sodha's vegan recipe for crispy fried rice with cucumber, peanut and herb salad

Out of failure often comes a lot of washing-up and, occasionally, a better dish than I had originally planned. This was meant to be a take on the Laotian dish nam khao, made using rice balls mixed with Thai red curry paste, among other ingredients, and fried. It didn’t work out (let’s not talk about it). But what did arise, quite happily, out of the ashes of that recipe was this one, in which I’ve hard-fried day-old rice until addictively crisp and chewy, and mixed it with an eye-wateringly punchy, sweet, sour and crunchy salad.

Crispy fried rice with cucumber, peanut and herb salad

The key to successful crispy rice is day-old, fridge-cold rice. That either means using leftover rice or starting this dish the day before. If you’re using leftover cooked rice, you’ll need 1kg, but given that most people won’t have that much to hand, I’ve written the recipe assuming you’re starting from scratch (if you do have cooked rice, adjust the quantities in the recipe according to how much you have). To transform this from lunch into dinner, add a few slices of fried and seasoned tofu to the mix.

Prep 10 min
Cook 45 min (including pre-cooking the rice)
Serves 4

For the rice
350g jasmine rice (or 1kg leftover cooked rice)
1½ tsp salt
4 tbsp sunflower oil (I like Mr Organic’s)
12 spring onions, finely sliced

For the salad
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1-2 bird’s eye chillies (to taste), finely chopped
2½ tsp caster sugar
4 tbsp lime juice (ie, from 2 or 3 limes)
3 tbsp light soy sauce
1 cucumber, deseeded and diced
125g edamame beans, defrosted
5 tbsp (or 50g) salted peanuts, roughly chopped
1 handful coriander leaves (10g), roughly chopped
1 handful mint leaves (10g), roughly chopped

If you’re cooking the rice from scratch, put it in a sieve and rinse under a cold tap until the water runs clear. Tip the rice into a pan, add 600ml freshly boiled water and bring to a boil. Cover, turn down the heat to a whisper and cook for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave the rice to steam with the lid on for another five minutes, then spoon and spread out on a couple of plates, leave to cool completely, transfer to a container, seal and put in the fridge until needed.

Warm the oil in a large saucepan (for which you have a lid) over a medium-high heat and, once hot, add the spring onions and fry, stirring, for two minutes. Add the rice and salt, gently mix to combine, then press down with a fish slice to even out the top.

Leave to cook for six to seven minutes, then use the fish slice to turn the rice, and repeat the process twice more, until it starts to turn golden brown in places – the rice will take about 20 minutes to get a good level of crispiness, but if you have the time, keep going while you make the salad, to get it extra-crispy.

While the rice is frying, make the salad. Whisk the garlic, chilli, sugar and lime juice in a bowl, add the cucumber and all the remaining ingredients and toss to coat.

Put the rice on a serving plate and pile the herby, nutty salad in the centre, but only do this just before serving, or your newly crisped rice will go soggy.