A Tale of Two Chickens with recipes <LONG>
t r i l l i u m
This meant that although the farmer's market had closed, we could go to our
favorite farm and buy the last of the seasons harvest. It's a 2 1/2 hour
drive from our house, but worth every minute. Den and her husband grow the
nicest vegetable I've run across in Illinois. They never pick them too old
and big, and as an added bonus they are always well cleaned.
I ended up coming back with 3 boxes, we were buying for us, and another
family. We bought, amongst other things, a 1/2 bushel of the sweetest and
tender carrots, bags of chard (rainbow colored and regular), kale and arugula,
cucumbers, eggs (still eating of few of them now), beets (yes, I try every
year to like these, but I tend to agree with Ms. Melba), a stewing hen (layer)
and a roasting hen, and tons of garlic. We had already purchased a bushel of
onions specifically harvested for winter storage (they don't cut of the
stems). We were leaving the money in the barn, since they were out, and I
noticed in the cooler a large box of long red chillies. These red chillies
happened to be my favorite variety here, they are very similar to the type
used frequently in South East Asian cooking. They go by the name of Paper
Dragon. I took a bag and starting piling them in. The bf was a bit nervous
about this, since we hadn't arranged to buy any from Den, but I wasn't
worried. There was no way that box of pepper was going to get eaten, some of
them were already growing mold, and I added extra money to the pile we had
left. We ran into Den on the way out, and she was delighted that someone
wanted those chillies, she had been planning on giving them away for people to
string up and use as decoration. The bf was astounded that someone would have
such a treasure as that box of long ripe red chillies and use it for
decorative purposes. I was just smug that I had found them and got us some
because the dish we were making requires red chillies. The car has never
smelled so good as it did coming home. After a while we couldn't stand it and
started eaten the carrots, luckily for us, they had already been cleaned
pretty well.
We had always planned to make it up to the farm to buy chickens, because we
wanted to make Hainanese Chicken Rice. This is a pretty famous dish all over
SE Asia, but it is particularly loved by Singaporeans. Chicken rice is pretty
common to all of the southern groups, but Hainanese Chicken Rice takes this
dish to the extreme. The meal includes lightly boiled and chopped chicken,
rice cooked in chicken stock, along with other seasonings, soup, cucumber, and
various sauces. Hainan is an island of the coast of southern China and it was
only recently made a province (in 1988, I think). The people from Hainan,
like most of the southern Chinese, traveled and immigrated to many parts of
Asia, and brought their cooking with them. The bf says that they had a
tremendous influence on the development of Singaporean/Malaysian cooking as it
is known today, and that their cooking skill is legendary. I'm not sure how
much this dish resembles the original, since it contains some flavorings that
make me think of Hakka influences, as well as local flavors. This dish is
really a celebration of chicken flavor, it's the whole point, to savor the
'essence' of chicken. It relies on a good stock to cook the rice in and
prepare the soup, and a free range chicken that has lots of flavor. It also
relies, unfortunately for health concerns, on a generous usage of chicken fat.
Sophie and I were talking about this dish and she told me the Thai name for
this dish translates as "chicken fat rice". We were planning on use the
stewing hen we had bought to make the stock, and the roasting chicken to make
the meat part of the meal, however, the roasting chicken was the size of a
small turkey (!) so we cut it in half, used half for this meal and half to
make nasi briani ayam which I'll also post. The recipe we followed is our
own, but influenced by Mrs. Leong's recipe in "The Best of Singapore Cooking"
and Thian's mum's recipe found at this website:
http://dali.sintercom.org/makan/index.html, but who really helped us was my
Malaysian friend's mum, who has always graciously helped with any
S'porean/Malay cooking questions I may have.
Hainanese Chicken Rice:
You will need
1 fresh, free range chicken
Thai number 1 rice, or the best jasmine you can find
stock to cook your rice and stock for the soup
lots of ginger
garlic
pandan leaves
green onions
chicken fat
cloves
cinnamon
salt
cilantro
sesame oil
light soya
thinly sliced cucumber
The chicken:
Cook the chicken in the stock with a generous amount of bashed garlic cloves
(4 - 6), 2 thumb sized pieces of bashed ginger, 2 or 3 fresh pandan leaves or
more if using frozen one, salt. It's important not to over cook the chicken,
and not to let the stock come to a hard boil (you'll get cloudy soup). It
generally takes about 30 minutes of simmering for a fridge chilled 2 ½ lb
chicken to be cooked. Traditionally, the chicken is served with the parts
closest to the bone still a little pinkish. Put the chicken aside, and brush
it with sesame oil. When it has cooled, cut it into smallish pieces and
sprinkle it with cilantro and light soya.
The rice:
Rinse the rice until the water runs clear, and allow to drain. Fry a generous
amount of finely chopped ginger and garlic (11/2 T of each for 10 oz of rice?)
in chicken fat (if you don't have it, many recommend lard) until it is golden.
Remove the ginger and garlic from the pan, and add more chicken fat. Fry the
rice for 2 - 3 minutes. My friend's mum hates frying the rice, so she just
sticks pieces of chicken fat she has trimmed off the chicken in with the rice
while it is cooking. This doesn't seem to affect the flavor much, but the
texture is different. Put the rice in a rice cooker or pan, add 2 - 3 cloves,
a ½ inch of cinnamon stick, the ginger and garlic, and 2 -3 fresh pandan
leaves (more if frozen) and 1 tsp of salt. Cook until done, and fluff with a
fork before serving to separate the grains.
The soup:
You shouldn't have to do much to the stock at this point, it should be very
flavorful on it's own. Adjust for salt. When it is served, garnish with
green onion (and cilantro if you wish).
The sauces:
So traditionally, there was a ginger sauce, a chilli sauce and a dark soya
sauce served with the dish that people mixed to their satisfaction. We don't
do this because we are lazy and usually very hungry by the time we get to the
sauce. We make a combination of the sauces, that includes ginger and chilli.
I'm copying the recipe for the ginger chilli sauce out of "The Food of
Singapore" (Periplus World Cookbooks) because I don't pay attention to the
amounts we use:
Chilli Ginger Sauce:
100 g red chillies (3 1/2 oz)
30 g garlic (1 oz)
30 g (1 oz) ginger
1 Tablespoon white vinegar
1 - 2 Tablespoons sugar (we don't add sugar)
½ teaspoon salt
Chop and then pound or blend all ingredients together to obtain a sauce. Can
be stored in a covered container in the refrigerator for about 1 week (ours
lasts much longer, but we always use a clean spoon to scoop it out).
Serving:
The bf likes to mold the hot rice in a small bowl and turn it out onto a
plate, like it gets done at hawker centers. He garnishes it with cilantro and
a bit of sesame oil. The rice and soup are served hot, the chicken at room
temperature. Arrange pieces of chicken next to the rice, and a fan of thinly
sliced cucumber. If you forgot to brush the chicken with sesame before
chopping and splash light soya over it after chopping, do it now. Serve the
soup (garnished with thinly sliced green onions) and sambal in different
bowls. Forks and spoons are appropriate for food that is eaten on a plate in
Singapore.
Nasi Briani Ayam
This recipe is taken directly from "The Best of Singapore Cooking" by Mrs.
Leong Yee So. The bf like the way it turned out (I cooked it) but it wasn't
the chicken curry he is used to eating with briani in Singapore. We've
decided that the ones he remembers have fenugreek as a major spice flavor and
are tracking down other recipes to try. This smells to him like Muslim
holiday food, as opposed to the Nonya style chicken curry. I thought it was
good. I'm sure that I didn't use all the oil/ghee it calls for, she tends to
go overboard for our tastes in the oil department. Use your judgement. The
achar it is traditionally served with is incredibly time consuming, and
involves what looks to me like two days worth of work, so I chose the cheater
method in another cookbook. This one still took the better part of a day, but
is very yummy. I was describing it to an Indian (Brahmin) colleague at work
who was very curious about a pickle containing daikon and lemongrass. With
great trepidation, and after much assurances on his part, I gave him a small
jar of it. I initially didn't want to after he told me how, if he wanted
pickle, he would get it straight from relatives in India, and could always
count on having some about a month after he requested it, due to someone
always passing by his way when they left India. When he saw it, he didn't
think it looked yellow enough. However, he told me the next day that he
smelled it on the way back to his lab and it smelled 'right'. He was quite
dismayed that his roommates seemed to enjoy it as much as he did, and that it
was gone. He's bringing back the jar for a refill.
Ingredients:
A
1 thumb sized piece of ginger
3 cloves of garlic
4 green chillies (I used the medium sized Thai red chillies (not the long ones
like Paper Dragon))
B
1 handful of mint leaves
2 stalks of coriander (cilantro) with roots, rinsed (if you don't have the
plants with roots, use extra stalks, that's what I do when I can't find rooted
ones)
2 tomatoes, cut in eighths (hah, tomatoes in November in Chicago??? I used
Muir Glenn canned, diced, no salt tomatoes, about ½ c)
2 tablespoons tomato puree (I used more tomato juice)
Seasoning
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons msg (I have nothing against msg and use it all the time. I
skipped it here, because the chicken was already so flavorful I felt it wasn't
needed)
1 teaspoon sugar (I always skip the sugar, because I don't like a sweetish
taste with savory, but it would be more "authentic" if it was included)
3 1/2 lb chicken, quartered
225 g ghee (8 oz) or 112 g butter mixed with 112 g oil
1 teaspoon dry chilli powder mixed to a paste with water (I just used 2 or 3
dried red chillies and crushed and ground them)
1 level teaspoon garam masala (I used tj's)
170 ml (6 fl oz) evaporated milk mixed with 1 T lemon juice and 112 ml (4 fl
oz) water (evaporated milk is a very common ingredient in Indian curries
originating from S'pore or Malaysia, I don't know why)
285 g shallots, thinly sliced (10 oz)
Method:
1. Marinated the chicken pieces with 1 level tablespoon salt and 1 teaspoon
msg for 1 hour.
2. Heat a large saucepan with half of the ghee. Fry the shallots till golden
brown. Set aside.
3. Fry A until fragrant. Add chilli pasted and garam masala, then add in B,
seasoning and ½ of the milk mixture. Stir fry until oil bubbles through.
4. Put in chicken pieces, fried shallots, remaining milk and oil. Cook over
high heat for 10 minutes.
5. Reduce heat to low and cook gently till chicken is tender. Drain chicken,
keeping the oil to cook the briani rice.
To cook rice:
C
1 teaspoon chopped ginger
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
4 shallots thinly sliced
D
5 cm (2 inches) cinnamon bark (I used Ceylon cinnamon)
8 cardamoms, lightly bashed
6 cloves
600g (21 oz) Basmati rice, washed and drained
55 g (2 oz) ghee
Seasoning
1 teaspoon msg or 1 chicken stock cube (I skipped both of these)
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1.1 litres (40 fl oz) boiling water
Colouring for Rice:
Mix 1 teaspoon yellow food colouring with 1/4 teaspoon rose essence and 4
Tablespoons water (I didn't do this! I used a pinch of saffron in 4 T hot
water, which I figured was more appropriate, plus the rose essence and added
it where it called for the colouring)
1. Heat wok with 55 g (2 oz) ghee to fry C till lightly browned, add in D and
stir-fry for 1 - 2 minutes. Add in the remaining oil and the rice. Stir in
pan till oil is absorbed into rice.
2. Pour in the boiling water and the seasoning. Cook rice in an electric
rice-cooker till dry and fluffy. Do not stir while cooking.
3. Remove lid and sprinkle the yellow colouring mixture over rice. Continue
to cook for another 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Loosen rice, mixing
colours evenly. Serve hot with chicken (and achar).
Acar Kuning (Pickled Vegetables) from "The Food of Singapore"
This recipe makes a lot! A huge bowlful…but it keeps well. Don't throw away
the oil that you deep fry the shallots and garlic in, it gets used in other
dishes as a garnish oil, like sesame oil. My favorite way to eat it is with
soft tofu that has been rinsed in boiling water and broken apart. Drizzle the
shallot oil and light soya over it, sprinkle with green onions and eat with
steamed rice.
600 g (1 1/4 lb) carrots
600 g (1 1/4 lb) giant white radish (daikon)
600 g (1 1/4 lb) cucumbers (the pickling kind)
½ c coarse salt ( I used sea salt)
10 cloves garlic
5 cm (2 inches) ginger
5 cm (2 inches) turmeric
½ c oil
2 lemon grass, bruised
30 shallots, deep fried whole
30 garlic cloves, deep fried whole
30 green bird's eye chillies (I used red ones, which would normally be stuffed
with a spice mixture in the Nonya recipes)
1 teaspoon white pepper powder
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 c distilled white vinegar
3 cups of water
Peel the carrots and radish and cut into strips 1 cm X 5 cm, about 4 cm in
length (1/2 x1/4 inch, 1 1/2 inch long). I used a Bernier for this job. Do
not peel the cucumber but halve lengthwise, remove seeds and cut into the same
size as the carrots and radish. Mix vegetables with salt and set aside for
about 20 minutes while preparing the remaining ingredients.
Chop then pound or blend the 10 cloves garlic, ginger and turmeric until fine
(I spaced out and ground the lemon grass too, it tastes good that way). Heat
oil in heavy pan and add blended mixture, lemon grass, whole shallots, garlic
and bird's eye chillies. Sauté for 5 minutes over a low fire.
Add the prepared vegetables and stir thoroughly until well mixed (by this
time, they had given off a lot of water, from the salt, which I drained) Add
pepper, sugar and season to taste with salt (huh! It's already very salty!)
Add the vinegar and water and simmer for 3 - 4 minutes until the vegetables
are just cooked but still firm. Set aside to cool. Can be stored in a
covered jar in the refrigerator for up to 1 month (it's been made since
November and still quite good).
regards,
trillium
Jeffrey P. Vasquez
>We had some unseasonably warm weather here in the first 2 weeks of November.
Thanks!
Can you tell me more about onions harvested for winter storage? How to
keep them, how long to keep them, how to harvest, etc. -regards
aem
> [snip trip to farm] We had always planned to make it up to the
> farm to buy chickens, because we wanted to make Hainanese
> Chicken Rice. This is a pretty famous dish all over SE Asia,
> but it is particularly loved by Singaporeans. Chicken rice is
> pretty common to all of the southern groups, but Hainanese
> Chicken Rice takes this dish to the extreme. [snip recipes]
Thanks so much. There will be a weekend some time this winter
when we just want to stay in and cook. Now we know what we'll
make. 'Chicken rice' of some kind is found in many cuisines, and
until now our favorite has been the Cuban version, but this reads
like the one that may supplant it.
t r i l l i u m
~Can you tell me more about onions harvested for winter storage? How to
~keep them, how long to keep them, how to harvest, etc. -regards
Well, I can tell you what I know, but since I'm not the person who harvested
them, I probably don't know much. I can ask the next time I'm at the farm. I
do know that you don't want to cut off the stem part of the onion, just let it
dry out and don't trim the roots. I keep mine (yellow variety) in a cardboard
box out of light (a cool closet or basement works well). I'm in Chicago, so I
keep them in an area that doesn't get heated, and remains very cold all
winter. I don't get 100% non-spoilage, but I think I've thrown out 1 or 2 and
I'm half way through the bushel. I bought them in November and they are still
fine. I expect to use them up sometime in May, but I don't know how long they
will last before rotting since I never keep them that long.
Hope this helps.
regards,
trillium
t r i l l i u m
~The rice:
~Rinse the rice until the water runs clear, and allow to drain. Fry a generous
~amount of finely chopped ginger and garlic (11/2 T of each for 10 oz of rice?)
~in chicken fat (if you don't have it, many recommend lard) until it is golden.
~ Remove the ginger and garlic from the pan, and add more chicken fat. Fry the
~rice for 2 - 3 minutes. My friend's mum hates frying the rice, so she just
~sticks pieces of chicken fat she has trimmed off the chicken in with the rice
~while it is cooking. This doesn't seem to affect the flavor much, but the
~texture is different. Put the rice in a rice cooker or pan, add 2 - 3 cloves,
~a ½ inch of cinnamon stick, the ginger and garlic, and 2 -3 fresh pandan
~leaves (more if frozen) and 1 tsp of salt. Cook until done, and fluff with a
~fork before serving to separate the grains.
Sheesh. All that work and I send off the uncorrected version with typos
galore. It's not clear from this paragraph on its own (but obvious if you
read the whole thing), you want to use some of the chicken stock that you
cooked the chicken in as the liquid to cook the rice.
regards,
trillium
LeeBat
> Remove the ginger and garlic from the pan, and add more chicken fat. Fry
>the
>rice for 2 - 3 minutes. My friend's mum hates frying the rice, so she just
>sticks pieces of chicken fat she has trimmed off the chicken in with the rice
>
>while it is cooking. This doesn't seem to affect the flavor much, but the
>texture is different. Put the rice in a rice cooker or pan,
Does pre-frying affect the liquid/rice ratio needed to get
proper consistency of the steamed rice?
Guess I could find out the hard way but since you've
been there, done that......
t r i l l i u m
~Does pre-frying affect the liquid/rice ratio needed to get
~proper consistency of the steamed rice?
Maybe? I pre-fried the rice last time, and used the same amount of liquid I
always use...didn't really notice much difference. I am the pickier one of
the two when it comes to rice texture, so I think I would have noticed, but I
didn't really consider it at the time. When the bf does it, I don't think he
changes the amount of liquid. One warning, this will tend to form a brown
crust on the bottom, don't throw it out, it's the yummiest part.
~Guess I could find out the hard way but since you've
~been there, done that......
Let me know how it works when you do it.
regards,
trillium
Carmen Bartels
>
> Can you tell me more about onions harvested for winter storage? How to
I am not Trillium, but here is how we do it with onions from the
garden:
We dig out the onions and rub them free of dirt. Then we let them dry
in a dry and shady place outside until the long leaves are dry but firm.
Afterwards we either store them in another dry and dark place indoors
as-is or knot the stem together and hang them on that knot.
Carmen,
who hopes to harvest this year white onions besides the yelow ones and
still has not found bulbs or seeds for red ones
--
Carmen Bartels elfgar@OSB, elfgar@Xyllomer
ca...@squirrel.han.de caba@irc