TO celebrate Heritage Month, the Highway Mail will run a weekly recipe column that features local residents proudly sharing a slice of their heritage.
This week, Kloof High School’s Old Girl, Mary Lu, shares her take on the delicious Hainan Chicken Rice.
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With a penchant for travel – and an undeniable love for food -Mary is a jet-setter and has traversed the globe since matriculating and has seen, tasted and experienced what dozens of cultures have mastered in the kitchen over the years.
Ingredients:
Whole chicken with skin on, preferably with some fat
A bunch of spring onion
A piece of ginger, peeled
2 cups of white rice
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
Sesame oil
Sauce ingredients:
Spring onion, chopped
Ginger, chopped
One clove of garlic, grated
Chopped up chilli Coriander (optional)
Soy bean paste
Soy sauce
Sugar
Oyster sauce
Fish sauce
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Method:
Cut off small pieces of excess skin and fat from chicken and put it aside. Rub salt generously on the chicken and massage it in. Stuff 4 stalks of spring onion and sliced ginger pieces into the chicken cavity. Put chicken in a big pot and fill up the pot with water. Make sure it covers the chicken completely and bring it up a boil. Boil chicken between 30 to 40 minutes, depending on the size of the chicken. To check if chicken is cooked, put a knife into the thigh and, if the juice runs clear, then it’s cooked. While the chicken is boiling, put the cut off pieces of fat and skin into a dry pan and let the fat render out. Remove the pieces of chicken skin and fat, add some sesame oil and the chopped garlic, don’t let the garlic burn. Add the rice and coat the rice with the garlic oil. Put this into a rice cooker and add the chicken broth from the boiling chicken (instead of water) for the rice to cook. Once the chicken is cooked, remove from the pot and quickly submerse the chicken into a big bowl of ice water. This will ensure the chicken stays tender and juicy. After five minutes, take the chicken out, add a drizzle of sesame oil onto the chicken, cut it up and enjoy.
To make the sauces: Add the chopped ginger and the spring onion into a bowl, heat up some oil and make sure it’s hot, then add that into a bowl with the spring onion and ginger. Add some salt to taste. In another bowl, add some soy sauce, chili, spring onion, 1 clove grated garlic, chopped ginger, a sprinkle of sugar, fish sauce, soy bean paste, oyster sauce. Add some coriander if you like it. To dilute the sauce, add some of the stock from the chicken.
Caxton Local Media Covid-19 reporting
