Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Easy Hainanese Style Chicken Rice (ข้าวมันไก่พลัดถิ่น)




Hainanese Style Chicken Rice is one of the firm favourite street food dishes for my family back home. I craved for this dish last week. I had chicken and rice but not all the ingredients so I had to use whatever available in the larder but it turned out surprisingly nice and I was so happy. The recipe below is enough for 2.

Chicken
2 Chicken Breasts, boneless, skin on
A pot of water
2 slices of ginger
Salt
Rinse chicken breasts well in cold water and rub with a bit of salt (about 1/4-1/2 tsp). Boil the water in a pot – throw in a slice or 2 of ginger. Blanch chicken breasts in boiling water and lift 4-5 times to seal then reduce the heat to simmer and poach the chicken until cooked through (about half an hour). Skim the scum off from time to time. When the chicken breats are cooked, turn off the heat but leave the chicken in the hot water for another 10 minutes or so then lift and rest. Brush the skin with a little bit of oil. Save about 2 cups of cooking liquid to cook rice.

Rice
1 cup long grain rice
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
½ tsp salt
1 3/4 cups chicken stock
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 slices of ginger
Mix rice with oil, garlic and ginger – add salt and chicken stock. You can cook rice in the microwave 5 minutes on high and 15 minutes on half power. Stand for 5 minutes and fluff up the rice. If you have a rice cooker, it will be a lot easier -  just make sure that you add stock a little bit higher than the mark (about half way to the higher mark) so that the rice will be properly cooked. I used rice cooker to cook mine.

Sauce
3 tablespoons sweet soy sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 slices of ginger, chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped
2-3  peri peri chillies or 1 red chilli, chopped
Juice of one lime or lemon
Mix all the above ingredients together in a bowl and it's done!.

On the Side
Cucumber, sliced
2-3 coriander leaves to garnish

Top the rice with chopped chicken. Serve with cucumber and sauce. We normally have chicken cold and rice lukewarm, sometimes at room temperature.

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