Hainanese chicken rice

Do you ever do anything totally delusional? Do you ever get stuck on an idea and feel the intense need to follow it through to completion, even though it’s delusional?

I do.

I did it when I decided, while sitting with the travel agent, that ‘sure! I could take 6 weeks off, my boss will be ok with it, book that holiday!’. It didn’t matter that I wouldn’t yet have been working there a year, or I only got 4 weeks holiday annually I just decided it would be alright, and it was.

Yesterday at work I stumbled upon a recipe for Hainanese Chicken Rice and the idea stuck. Stuck fast in fact. I tried to reason with myself, this wasn’t a quick recipe to throw together after work, but before I realised it, I found myself explaining the F how to buy a whole chicken.

Of course I got caught up at work, I imagined this was going to be an experiment similar to the Julie/Julia Project, you know, eating something decadent at midnight. In reality though, an amended version of this recipe took just over an hour, we were eating before 8:30 with most of the washing up done, too!

But back to the dish, what could be better than perfectly rice cooked in stock (i cheated, and used store bought, but now I have a lovely pot of asian flavoured stock resting in my fridge), tender chicken with a spicy ginger sauce? This was the idea that I couldn’t get out of my head, but I’ve realised, sometimes being delusional is a good thing.

Sometimes being delusional gets you a 6 week long holiday, or comforting Hainanese Chicken Rice.

Hainanese Chicken Rice
Adapted from SBS food safari

For the Chicken
1 very chicken
1 tbsp Chinese rice wine
1 tbsp soy sauce
6 slices fresh ginger
3 clove garlic, slightly bruised
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp light soy sauce
½ tsp sea salt

For the Rice
3 cups long grain rice
2 tbsp chicken or pork fat (I just used grapeseed oil)
2-3cm ginger, grated
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped very finely or grated
1-2 tsp salt (to taste)
3 ½ cups chicken stock according to rice instructions (I used store bought stock, to speed things up)

For the Chilli Ginger
2cm piece ginger
3 garlic cloves
1/2 hot green chilli
4 green schallots
½ tsp sea salt
2 tsp sesame oil.
2 tbsp chicken stock (from the boiled chicken)

Bring a large pot 3/4 full of water to the boil (pot must be large enough for chicken to be immersed in water). Meanwhile, wash and dry chicken and rub with rice wine and soy sauce. In a mortar and pestle, pound half the ginger and garlic with salt until almost smooth. Put this mixture in the cavity of the bird.
When the water boils, add the chook and remaining ginger, turn off the heat and cover.
After 30 mins, turn the heat back on and bring the liquid up to just before boiling point, and then turn the heat off, again.
After an hour, remove the chicken, cut into bite sized pieces and dress with sesame oil and soy sauce.

While the chicken is cooking you can cook the rice. Heat the fat or oil in a pan and add chopped ginger and garlic, fry until fragrant and add the rice and fry well. Transfer the rice to an electric rice cooker and add enough stock to cook. Cook.

Meanwhile, make the sauce. I know the recipe called for 2 sauces, a ginger and a chilli sauce, I made a conglomeration.
Pound the ginger, garlic and chilli in a mortar and pestle with the salt until smooth. Slice the schallots. In a pan, heat a little oil and cook the schallots lightly, white part first. After a minute, add the pounded mixture, green parts of the schallots and the chicken stock. Cook until the shallots have just collapsed. Reserve and mix sesame oil through.

When everything is ready, serve with lightly cooked green vegetables, bok choy or similar.