Hainanese Chicken Rice (Paste)

This aromatic rice is nothing to be sniffed at - fragrant with garlic, shallots and lemongrass, it is a match made in heaven for poached chicken pieces, sliced cucumber, and a garlicky chilli sauce. Easy peasy, tasty paste-y :)

If you somehow end up in a situation where your son, on his birthday, decides spontaneously that he wants to have Hainanese Chicken Rice for dinner, have no fear. I've been there. Here's my emergency recipe. I have no idea if it's authentic since I've not referred to any recipe sites for this and I have basically tried and guessed my way through this, but my husband says it tastes nice and that's good enough for me, really....


Chicken Rice Paste (for 1.5-2 cups of rice)

Ingredients 
(To blend)
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
3 cloves garlic
1 shallot
1 tsp sesame oil (or more, if you really like sesame oil!)
1 tsp chicken stock powder/granules
1/2 tbsp water
slightly less than 1/4 tsp salt

(Others) 
2 stalks lemongrass, cut into 2 cm sections
1 knot of pandan leaf (also known as screwpine leaf)  if available
1 tbsp cooking oil

Instructions
Blend the above ingredients to form a smooth paste. Pour oil into a warm frying pan and saute the blended paste with the lemongrass pieces until it is fragrant and achieves a nice brownish hue.

Having washed your rice and added the appropriate amount of water into your rice cooker, stir the paste in and add in a little more water (I find that cooking any rice with oily things tend to result in undercooked rice, so a bit more water is required to compensate for this, roughly an extra 1/5 cup). Add the pandan leaf, then cook the rice

When the rice is cooked, remove the pieces of lemongrass and pandan leaf, and stir the rice to ensure even distribution of the paste. Serve warm, with appropriate accompaniments.

Note: If you don't fancy using chicken stock granules, just use the poaching liquid from your chicken (but that of course means that you'll have to cook your chicken FIRST before cooking the rice....). Me, I prefer to do the exact reverse, which is to fry off the paste in a deep pan, and after I've added the paste to the rice, I add water into that pan and use that liquid to poach the chicken....

Recipe for accompaniments to Hainanese Chicken Rice (the chicken, soy sauce, and chili sauce)

Hainanese Chicken Rice is a well known dish around Asia - many variations exist, and this is one of them. Succulent poached chicken sitting on a bed of cucumbers and dark sauce, accompanied by fragrant rice and a garlicky chili sauce, it is little wonder that the dish is as popular as it is. This ridiculously easy version features deboned chicken legs as a convenient alternative to poaching a whole chicken 

If you're in my situation and have a relatively small family (and dislike having leftovers), you'll agree that poaching/steaming a whole chicken is sometimes an impractical task - You need a pot or steamer big enough, you end up with leftover chicken which is tricky to reheat properly the next day, you need to chop the pieces up after it's been cooked (resulting in some mess and splatter), and odds are only the men will enjoy the chicken breast portion anyway. The solution is obvious - use deboned chicken legs instead - they are cheap, tasty, succulent, and a cinch to debone when raw (and saves you having to debone it for your offspring after it's cooked anyway)

You'll notice that I have been careful to post this as "accompaniments" to Hainanese Chicken rice - I do have a recipe for cooking the rice from scratch, but i have not fully worked out the ratio of the ingredients and have been cheating and using instant paste :P Will add that in the next time after I've had a chance to try it out.

Poached Hainan White Chicken (Pak Cham Kai/Pak Chit Kai)

Ingredients for flavouring the poaching liquid (completely optional)
Thumb-size ginger
2 cloves of garlic
Salt
A few dashes of white pepper
A few drops of sesame oil
1 tsp fish sauce
Deboned fillets of chicken legs (I have a family of 3, so we had 3 chicken legs - 3 thighs & 3 drumsticks)

Fill a shallow pan (that has a lid!) with sufficient water to cover all the fillets. Add all the flavouring ingredients and bring the water to a strong rolling boil. Gently put in chicken pieces. If the water temperature has dropped (i.e. it's stopped boiling) bring it to the boil again - once it is boiling, cover the pan and turn the heat off (yes, that means turn the gas completely off, no fire, etc). Leave it for 25 minutes. In the meantime, prepare the soy sauce and the chili sauce.

After 25 minutes, remove the chicken pieces and immerse in a bowl of very cold water. After 5 minutes, the chicken is ready to be sliced and served on top of a bed of cucumber. Drizzle the soy sauce over it, scatter some coriander and chives/spring onions and enjoy!

Chili Sauce
Ingredients

0.5-1 red capsicum (red pepper - depends on how much you want, usually for 3 people half a pepper is sufficient)
1-2 red chilies (to taste)
1 clove garlic
Thumb-sized ginger (optional, only use this if you don't want to put any chilies in it at all)
Lime juice
Salt and sugar to taste

Blend everything, adding lime juice, salt and sugar to taste. (See, told you it was ridiculously easy)

Soy sauce for chicken
Ingredients
1 tsp dark soy sauce
3 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sugar (optional - if you are using Malaysian soy sauces which are naturally sweet, you don't need this)
1 clove garlic
1 handful of chives/spring onion
A few coriander leaves
A dash of white pepper
Salt to taste
Half a ladle of remainder poaching liquid

Dissolve the sugar in about 2 tbsp boiling water. Mix all the other sauce ingredients together to taste (the quantities above are given as a guideline, feel free to cater to individual tastes!)