Hainanese Chicken Rice (Adam Liaw)

This is week two of sw.me cooking a dish for eg.me from her new Adam Liaw's book "Two Asian Kitchens". It was fun, I think she learnt alot, like how to mince garlic, how to chop chicken Chinese style, how to trim fat from a chicken, how Chinese cooking you have to prep and work quick or else the garlic burns etc. She really liked the end result, she actually ate rice!

Our chicken had barely any fat on it so next time I think we will try to get one with more fat on it so that we can render more oil for coating the rice. I wanted to save the crispy fat bits for eg.me because he said Nenek used to put that on top of her fried rice, but like an idiot I dropped it. Will be more careful next time.

Ingredients

1.5kg whole chicken, skin on

chicken stuffing:

5 whole unpeeled cloves of garlic

5 thick slices of ginger

chicken coating:

Sesame oil

rice coating:

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 thick slices of ginger

dressing:

1 tbsp sesame oil

2 tbsp light soy

60ml soup

Directions

Cut all visible fat off the chicken and render the fat in a small saucepan over very low heat until you get crispy chicken fat bits. Don't leave it to the point that those fat bits burn.

Stuff the cavity of the chicken with the 5 cloves of garlic and 5 slices of ginger. Place breast side down in a pot, just cover with water. Cover, bring up to the boil, then simmer for 25 mins. Switch off heat and leave on heat for 30mins.

Remove the chicken from the stock, brush with sesame oil and cover with cling wrap so it doesn't dry out and set aside.

Use the chicken fat oil to fry 2 cloves minced garlic and 2 slices ginger till fragrant to flavour the oil. Quickly add in the washed rice and coat with the oil. Transfer to a rice cooker and add enough stock to cook as per normal.

Slice the chicken Chinese style. The way to do this according to Kylie Kwong is to split the chicken down the middle between the breast fillets. Slice off the maryland. Slice off the wings. Chop though the thigh and the drumstick though the join. It should be easy if you chop through the join. Chop into slices. Separate the breast fillets from the bony bits. Chop that into slices. Mum says you don't slice, you have to do a swift chop with a cleaver so that the skin will stay in place while having enough force to chop through bone. Cover with the dressing of mixed sesame oil, light soy sauce and stock.

You'll have enough left over stock to have soup.

Service the chicken, rice, soup with condiments. (Adam suggests coriander, spring onions, chilli sauce and spring onion oil.)