Pineapple Fried Rice

Alex and I got married at the Wynn hotel here in Las Vegas almost five years ago; our anniversary is next week!

That may make us kind of partial to the place but they really do have some pretty great restaurants.  One of our favorites is Wazuzu at Encore.  Wazuzu is a Pan-Asian restaurant so you can get sushi and dim sum, Thai or Indian food.  And you can get Pineapple Fried Rice.

Since dinners out are much less frequent now that we have twins running (well, crawling) around, we figured we'd try making this dish here at home.  We found a recipe from The Neely's on foodnetwork.com, made a couple of changes, and we are in love. With each other AND the rice ;)  Our recipe unfortunately doesn't include roast duck, and we've substituted bacon for the Chinese sausage, but it's still pretty darn delicious.

Pineapple Fried Rice, adapted from The Neely's
1/4 lb bacon, chopped
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1-inch knob of ginger, peeled and diced
2 green onions, sliced (both white and green  parts)
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 thai chili, chopped
1 cup diced pineapple
4 cups cooked rice (can be a day or two old!)
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined

Put the chopped bacon in a large cold skillet, bring to medium-high heat and cook.  Set aside.  Add peanut oil to the pan and once it begins to shimmer, put in the onions, garlic, ginger and green onions.  Cook them until they are softened, about 5 minutes.  Add the bell pepper, thai chili and bacon to the pan and cook for an additional 3 minutes or so.  Now stir in the rice and pineapple.  Saute the rice for about 5 minutes or until it begins to turn a light brown.  Stir in the sesame oil and soy sauce.  Once combined add the shrimp.  Cook just until the shrimp turn pink, about 5 minutes.  Transfer to a bowl and serve!