The History
Sometime, somewhere, in Hainan, China, a chicken and rice dish was born. Perhaps because chickens were so precious, every bit of nutrition and flavour was wrung out of the bird. The chicken fat was used to pre-fry the rice, the poaching liquid, to cook the rice. All that, no doubt, to enable a chicken to go further, be shared among more people.
In the process, a miracle was born. Today, a richer version is one of Singapore’s national dishes. Usually, it is chicken, poached to perfection, served over a rich, aromatic rice enriched with chicken fat and stock. A dish like this provokes strong opinions.
This, is my version, which uses roast chicken and is scaled down for smaller parties.
Overview
This is a recipe for making the dish for a small dinner party . I serve my rice with the roast (not the poached) version of chicken. This is intended for a workday evening – hot steaming, waxy rice, and roast chicken.
The magic potion
The magic potion here, is collected from the bottom of the tray when I roast a chicken :
In this cup, is chicken fat floating on a rich, brown chicken stock. To get this, you have to pour water into your baking dish, so the juices don’t dry out. I pour this magical stuff into screwtop jars and seal the jars while hot, effectively canning it. When cool, I put them in the freezer. There, they rest, like gems awaiting their liberation from the earth. The potion you see here is from roasting one chicken.
Ingredients (for two)
- One cup (180ml, 155g) raw Jasmine Rice
- Three thin slices ginger
- Two chicken thighs, marinated with
- One tablespoon light soya sauce
- One tablespoon Shaoxing Wine
- One teaspoon sesame oil
- Dash of white pepper
- Dash of five spice powder
- Magic potion (in this case from one chicken)
Prep
Marinate the chicken tights, defrost the magic potion.
Cook!
Preheat oven to 220 deg C.
Wash rice, and set aside, ideally allowing it to drain over a fine sieve. Pound up ginger slices, making sure it’s a fine paste.
Set a saucepan over a medium heat. Scoop the chicken fat off the magic potion, and put into into the sauce pan. Fry the pounded ginger in the chicken fat till fragrant (it will smell wonderful!). Tip the rice into the pan, and fry for a minute more, till it turns slightly translucent. (Yes, this is a rice pilaf, in western lingo).
Now, transfer the pre-fried rice into a rice cooker, and pour in the stick part of the magic potion. Top up with water to the required level.
You can now cook this in a regular rice cooker.
Set the two chicken thighs on a wire rack set on a baking dish, and pour water into the dish. Slide into the oven. The chicken will take about 25 minutes to cook:
That should mean it will be ready about the same time as the rice! As ovens can be quite different, keep an eye on the chicken, or follow whatever you are comfortable with!
Eat!
Plate out the chicken, drizzling it with more soya sauce and sesame oil if you like. You add some Shaoxing rice too, the serving sauce is much like the marinate. Garnish.
Does that rice look nice?
I really can’t decide if the star of this dish is the rice, or the chicken :
But, it is the seamless combination of the two, which makes this dish special. And it goes very well with white wine!
But wait, there’s more!
If you had followed closely, and poured some water into the baking dish, you will see that is more magic potion at the bottom of the baking tray used to roast the legs, and so, the cycle goes on….
Now imagine if you didn’t listen to me, when you roast a chicken, all that magic goes to waste!
Enjoyed reading this? Like Dubeer’s on Facebook for more!