Instructions

1. Look at the shrimp before you commit to the pan. Dried shrimp should smell of the sea and be pale orange; a grey one with an ammonia edge has turned, and a single bad shrimp flavors the whole pot.
2. Tip the shrimp, pineapple, peppers, coconut and rice into a dry pan with the water and leave it off the heat for five minutes. That soak does the real work — starting everything in cold water stops the outsides going soft before the middles have taken any up.
3. Squeeze a piece of pineapple after a few minutes. If it is still hard in the centre, let the pan stand longer before you light the burner, because it will not soften once the rice has claimed the liquid.
4. Bring it to the boil and then cook it for barely a minute. The rice was cooked before it was dried, so this is reheating rather than boiling, and a long boil turns it to paste.
5. Take it off the heat, put the lid on and leave it completely alone for ten minutes. Steam trapped under the lid finishes the peppers, which are the toughest thing in the pan.
6. Fork it through and eat it straight away. There is no fat in this and nothing holding moisture in it, so a bowl left standing goes claggy within the hour.
7. Made up dry and vacuum-sealed, the mix itself is good for a year in a pack. The coconut is the part that limits it — once it smells like crayons rather than coconut, the oil has gone.