Today's entry is kind of a knee jerk reaction. I was watching the Asian food channel when I saw datuk Jimmy Choo talking about his favourite food which is Hailam chicken rice. I was going to make lunch anyway so i thought I'd check out some recipes on the interwebs. Found a few under Hainanese Chicken Rice and for a lack of cultural understanding I am going to assume that Hailam and Hainanese 'probably' refers to the same recipe. For now. Don't get your knickers in a twist.
Continuing on from my previous Chinese themed recipes (see kailan oyster and stramed fish) I'm afraid this is another one. And it's kind of great because the kailan dish goes great with this, and if you've tried the steamed fish, some of the methods are very similar.
So ingredients (serves 3-4 hungry peeps)
Half a chicken
Ginger
Garlic cloves
Cucumber
Rice
Chillies
Light soya sauce
Sesame oil
Ok here be stepz:-
1. Weird thing out of the way first. You have to extract chicken oil. As you are trimming and cleaning your chicken, save the excess skin and fat. Put them in a shallow pan over low heat and render the fat out. What? You got problem wid dat??
2. Place the chicken in a pot and cover with enough water to submerge it. Oh try to leave the chicken as whole as possible. Don't cut it into small pieces yet. Put 4-5 slices of ginger (young ones), and 3 cloves of garlic.
3. Bring the water to a gentle simmer and turn the heat to low. Continue simmering for about 15-20 minutes. Turn the heat off and cover. Leave the chicken in there for 10-20 more minutes to finish cooking. It is very important to low and slow the chicken in order to get that juicy meat texture. Hard boiling will just dry out the meat and make it tough. Notice that no salt is used at this stage.
4. Gently remove the chicken from the pot and put it aside to cool. Using a skimmer (get one at japanese random object shops like daiso) skim off the gunk you see floating on top of your broth. Alternatively, use a strainer and transfer the broth through it to ensure you have a clear and clean liquid. Take about 2 cups of the broth to use as soup and add some salt to it. Very easy.
5. Now for the rice. The key here is both aroma and flavor. You get flavor from the broth but you get the aroma from the fat. So start by frying sine finely chopped garlic in 2 tbsp of the rendered chicken fat. Add the rice (soaked and rinsed until water is clear) and stir until the grains are covered in the fat. This will ensure that your rice will be nice and fluffy and not soggy. Transfer everythg into a rice cooker. Add in the chicken broth at 1:1 ratio. 1 cup rice = 1 cup broth. But if you want softer rice i guess you can put in a bit more. Add some salt and let the rice cooker do its magic.
6. You're almost there. Now you need to make the chilli dipping sauce. I made more than i needed so feel free to reduce the amount of ingredients. 4 large red chillies, 4 bird's eye chillies, 4 cloves of garlic, some ginger, sugar, salt and some broth to tie it all together. Just adjust the sugar and salt until you get the right balance. Squeeze 2 tbsp of lime juice right at the end and stir.
7. I removed the chicken meat from the bones to make it easier to eat. I really hate how chicken rice shops just splinter the bones into the meat and make it hard for people to eat. Sliced some cucumber and garnished with herb of the month; corriander.
8. Soy seasoning: crucial stuff here. Since the chicken is not seasoned, the saltiness from the soy sauce won't overpower the chicken flavour. I used about quarter cup of soy sauce and mixed that with some of the chicken broth. Added some sliced ginger, and about a tbsp of sesame oil. Check for taste, it shouldn't be overly salty. Pout the mixture ober the chicken just before serving
So there you go! The dish is quite simple to make but there are a lot of steps involved. The key ingredient here is the chicken broth / stock which goes into everything. So one way to shorten your cooking time is to have this on hand, as well as the chicken fat. Trust me, the chicken fat is crucial. Don't skip it or you might as well forget about the whole thing.
So economics. Half a chicken cost me about RM7 and the rest of the ingredients are mostly pantry stuff (the ligjt soy in particular is a convenient little addition to my fridge nowadays) so I'd put it at about RM12 total. Serves 3-4 people while eating out you'd probably pay about RM6-8 for a plate of chicken rice. Papa Rich (scumbag kopitiam) charges RM10++ for a plate (i think it is more) which is ridiculous if you ask me. So the savings are not bad if you are willing to spend over an hour watching over rendering fat. BOOM!
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