fried rice with squash, chestnuts and chard

There’s an element of luck to tonight’s dinner. We’ve never had the chicken and chorizo pie before, but in the same suggested Bonfire night meal planner is this rice and squash dish. Not that we’re planning to have it, but the ingredients are made up of the usual odds and ends we have going spare: half a squash, half a tub of cream cheese, rice, spinach or chard (okay, spinach) and parsley. All I need to do is get some chestnuts in the cupboard and we’re sorted for any future occasion when the pantry is bare. Even better, and completely coincidentally, Ana come across the same recipe whilst tidying up earlier in the week and said it looked tasty.

This is very lucky as not three days later I’ve inexplicable under-planned the week’s meals by a day, and we’ve got the following in the fridge:

· Half a squash left-over from the vegetable biryani

· Half a tub of cream cheese

· A bag of spinach and chard salad

In fact the only thing we’re missing is the parsley, and I’m not convinced at the very first attempt making it whether I can simply swop in the tarragon lurking in the salad crisper.

As it turns out, tarragon might not have been a bad addition. It’s a pretty easy thing to knock together and is quite nice, but it lacks a certain punchiness to make it really delicious. Ana’s suggestion of adding soy sauce is pretty inspired and certainly lifts it up, and I think melting some cheddar cheese on top would also add some more flavour, and maybe some chilli and/or ginger. Even better, I’m fairly sure you could use a variety of handy, left-over ingredients to make this – aubergine, courgette and mushrooms would all definitely work.

sources
 fried rice with squash, chestnuts and chard - Delicious, November 2011, p76