Going With My Gut

Warming the Cockles of My Heart #2 -- Black Hemlock Blood Cockles

Do you have an embarrasing food fetish? Something you more than love eating, but avoid telling anyone about. Or at least, blush when you do. Or worse, deny your love in public. Because of the faces they always pull. Because of their inevitable shudders of disgust.

Maybe it's a particularly stinky cheese. Or cold spam straight from the tin. Or a really awkward bit of an animal's face. <Insert your embarrasing food fetish here>

So. Here goes. Mine is blood cockles. With a sauce made of dark soya sauce, red chillies, garlic, sugar and lime juice.

With vaguely polite company -- already special friends who cackle over cockles with me -- the blood cockles are blanched in boiling water for 10-30 seconds (depending on how conservative they're feeling that day about raw cockles). They are then shelled, and then said polite company dip the cockles said sauce before sucking them down.

Then the polite company goes home.

Out comes the secret stash of cockles. Well. Leftovers, really. But it's more scintillating to call it the secret stash.

These get splashed a bit with hot water then put into a tub. The black salty sweet sour spicy pungent hemlock is then poured all over the cockles. The tub is then left in the fridge overnight, and yours truly struggles with a fitful sleep, chomping at the bit for brunch.

And finally. Brunchtime arrives. Behold the hemlock-steeped cockles.

A bowl of plain rice congee is doled out. I shell the cockles quickly, one after the other, and keep chucking them into the bowl until the snow-white congee is smothered with chilled briny earthy maroon cockles, shards of chili and garlic, and multi-directional trickles of sweet salty sour black blood.

I know it's not pretty. But the gut wants what the gut wants.

First things first: Always buy cockles from a fishmonger you know and trust. Soak and agitate in a basin of tap water 2-3 times, until the water stays clear.

Recipe for Black "Hemlock"

No exact proportions. Combine these ingredients below, keep tasting till you like it, and make sure it will cover about 1/3 to 1/2 of the tub of cockles.

Dark soya sauce
Red chillies, finely chopped, seeds left in
Garlic, roughly chopped
Pinch of sugar
Lime juice

Recipe for Plain White Congee

• Use 10-12 cups of water for every 1 cup of white rice
• Place rice and water in a pot on the stove, and bring the water to a boil
• Reduce stove heat to a low simmer
• Cook for another 20 minutes, then check if the rice has reached a consistency you like. If it's not soft enough, cook for another 10 minutes and check again
• IMPORTANT! Do not stir the pot, as this will release the starch from the rice. This starch will settle at the bottom of the pot and burn

Mum's World's Best Changi Beach Fried Rice

My Mum's fried rice is world's best fried rice.

There. I said it.

You'll protest. You'll campaign for some version by some relative or restaurant. Maybe it'll involve ingredients like crab, or salted egg, or salted-fish slivers. I'll nod and smile. I'll invite you to organise a taste-off. I might even really enjoy your candidate. But just so we're clear, I'm not actually going to concede anything.

Ok, I might concede that I'm a tad biased. But I'll have you know, this fried rice has been known to inspire saint-like patience among its pilgrims.

For about a decade now my Mum's been involved in a bible study organisation. They meet every week, and every year they mix up all the members in all the groups to make sure everyone circulates. Once a year, each small group gathers at their discussion leader's home for a social lunch.

Fried rice is at the top of my Mum's list of reliable party tricks, so she serves it at just about every one of these bible study group social lunches. Except she's been with the organisation so long that this year she had a few women in her group who were also in her group 7 years ago.

She took them aside at lunch to apologise for serving fried rice again.

Their response: "You don't understand. We've waited 7 years to eat your fried rice again!"

So. Even if you don't believe this is the world's best fried rice, you have to admit it's at least a bit... divine, no?

Mum's had a lot of time to perfect this recipe. She's been making it probably since the 1960s, to serve up when her entire family went to Changi Beach for their annual family picnic. Since then both the fried rice and Changi Beach have gotten more colourful, and developed more character (or characters, in the case of some notorious parking lots at Changi Beach). But the foundation stone to this dish remains the same: The rice has to be steamed and totally cooled before the frying process, so that it will stay whole and grainy when fried, rather than break down into a damp starchy goop.

Still not convinced? Ah well. As a certain Good Book said somewhere, maybe you'll just have to "taste and see that it is good".

Note: Photos here show Mum's fried rice being cooked for 16. I've halved the proportions in the text of this post so that it should serve 8. Just in case this all looks like an optical illusion!

Ingredients

6 cups white rice, cooked and cooled down the day before frying

Olive oil
5 eggs, cracked into a bowl and beaten quickly with a fork for 2 minutes until air bubbles form
3 Lap cheong (waxed Chinese sausages), finely diced. Look for these in an Asian specialist grocery. For the really adventurous, Rose's Kitchen even has a recipe to make your own!
500g small prawns, peeled and de-veined (Always save the heads and shells. Freeze them until you need to make a prawn-based soupstock e.g., tomyum soup!)
250g char siew (BBQed roast pork), finely diced. Any decent Cantonese-style Chinese diner selling roast meats will also sell this. Again, for the really adventurous, here are some char siew recipes from My Wok Life, Chubby Hubby and Rasa Malaysia if you want to try making your own
A handful of shallots, finely chopped
Salt and light soya sauce to taste

1-2 cucumbers, sliced
2-3 large tomatoes, sliced
1 small head lettuce, finely shredded
3 stalks of spring onions, finely diced
A small handful of coriander stalks, finely diced

2-3 red chillies, finely sliced
1-2 kalamansi limes, juice squeezed onto the cut red chili

Directions

• Drizzle a little olive oil into a wok on high heat on the stove
• Pour the beaten eggs into the wok
• Spread the eggs around the wok as much as possible to brown the eggs just a tad
• When most of the egg has cooked through, use the spatula to "chop" up the egg
• Remove the eggs from the wok and set aside

• Pour the diced chinese sausage into the wok, and let sit for a minute or 2, to tease the oil out of the chinese sausage
• Remove the chinese sausage from the work and set aside
• Pour the prawns into the wok, and fry them in the chinese sausage oil until about half the prawns are pink (this might be the source of the dish's divinity, me thinks)
• Add the diced char siew to the wok and stirfry with the prawns until the rest of the prawns are pink
• Remove the prawns and char siew and set aside

• Drizzle a generous amount of olive oil into the wok and let it warm up for a minute
• Add the chopped shallots to the wok and fry until the shallots start to brown
• Add the rice to the work and stir until the rice is somewhat evenly covered with the shallots

• Add the eggs to the wok. Stir until roughly even

Above: Cameo appearance by Aunty Kiew Moi, our veteran housekeeper, who's been executing Mum's fried rice recipe with aplomb for the last 30 years or so!

• Add the prawns, char siew and chinese sausages to the wok. Stir until even

• Keep stirring! Use 2 spatulas if needed. Add salt and light soya sauce to taste
• Transfer to rice cooker to keep warm

To Garnish:

• Serve up with shredded lettuce and sliced cucumber and tomato on the side
• Garnish rice with spring onion and cilantro
• Drizzle on a little cut red chili and lime juice

Bonus tip if you've read this far: If you're really serious about your audience for this dish, get this all fried up the day before you're serving it. Let the flavours sit and meld for a day, and reheat the fried rice either by steaming or microwaving (steaming preferred, to keep the prawns tender) just befor serving. It tastes even more heavenly then!

WWOOFING in Japan -- Making Yomogi Mochi the Old School Way

Above: Toasting your mochi before you eat them produces a golden crispy surface and a lovely warm gooey centre. But watch out -- toast them too long and they could erupt!

You might be familiar with mochi. The Japanese chewy gooey rice cakes usually filled with a sweet red bean paste, and in more recent times popping up in many more fahionable flavours (e.g. coffee) and fillings (e.g. fruit-flavoured jellies or ice-cream). Traditionally they were eaten by farmers in the winter to mend both body and soul, and are a treat eaten during the Japanese New Year.

What I wasn't familiar with, however, was just how mochi work hand-made mochi takes!

As Babs, Chris and I learnt how to make this delicious traditional treat while WWOOFING on a rice farm near Osaka, we wondered "can anyone we know actually make this at home?"

Possibly. If we can't tempt you with the great mochi workout (great exercise for the biceps and triceps, as the guys will attest!) check your Asian grocery stores for mochi sheets or mochi powder. As for yomogi (Japanese mugwort), it's long been regarded a North-Asian cureall for blood purification and inflammation reduction, so dried versions of the leaves have known to be sold in Asian markets and medical halls, to be used as a soup or tea or even spa ingredient!

But if you want try to make mochi the old school way, here's how. The effort might just make you love your mochi that mochi more.

Ingredients

800g Japanese sticky rice (note that this is a specific strain of rice different from regular Japanese rice, which is already stickier than say Basmati or Thai rice)
300g azuki (sweet red beans)
3 tablespoons white sugar
1 tablespoon unrefined sugar
200g yomogi (Japanese mugwort)

Directions

Preparing the Sticky Rice

• Soak the sticky rice overnight
• Drain the sticky rice and set aside

Preparing the Yomogi (Japanese Mugwort)

Collect a big plastic bag of young yomogi leaves. They grow wild in the Japanese and Korean countryside, in parks and even just next to roads. Foraging best done between March and May when the leaves are sufficiently sized, but still tender. Given we were on the farm in April, Shigemi sent us out to forage for the year's harvest. The surplus can be sun-dried or frozen.

• Remove leaves with brown bits
• Place yomogi in a large basin
• Put a couple of scoops of charcoal ash in a towel bag, and place the bag on top of the yomogi
• Pour boiling water on the ashbag until the basin is full of water. Leave a weight (e.g. a cooking pan filled with water) on the ash bag to keep the yomogi underwater

• The above process removes the bitterness from the yomogi leaves
• Drain the basin and squeeze the water out of the yomogi

Preparing the Azuki (Sweet Red Beans)

• Wash and drain 300g of azuki
• Bring the beans to a boil, boil for 5 minutes, then drain the water. This removes the bitterness from the beans
• Refill the pot with water and bring the beans to a boil again, then lower the flame as much as possible and let the beans continue to simmer until their skins have cracked
• Drain the beans
• Mix 3 tablespoons of white sugar and 1 tablespoon of unrefined sugar into the beans
• Shape the bean paste into little balls (about 2cm in diameter)

Making the Mochi

• Steam the soaked sticky rice for about 20 minutes
• Add a thick layer of yomogi on top of the rice and steam for about a couple of minutes
• Transfer the steamed yomogi to a mortar and use a mochi hammer (or pestle) to pound the yomogi (use short sharp quick movements of the hammer)
• Remove the yomogi from the mortar and set aside
• Transfer the sticky rice to the mortar
• Use a mochi hammer to pound the sticky rice into a smooth sticky dough (short sharp quick movements of the hammer)

Shigemi says she's never seen WWOOFERS make mochi with such...such... what's the word, Chris?

I osso say! A very respectable effort, when compared with these veterans.

• Add the pounded yomogi into the rice dough, and pound with long strokes of the hammer (swing the hammer from directly overhead) to mix the yomogi into the dough. Pound as quickly a possible – the rice dough is malleable only when it's still warm

• When the dough and yomogi is smoothly mixed, cut / pull out balls of dough (about 4 cm in diameter)
• Wet both your hands, and flatten out the dough ball in your palm. Make the edges of the patty thinner than the middle
• Place an azuki ball in the middle of the patty
• Fold in the corners of the patty (and the resulting smaller corners
• Turn the mochi upside down, wet your hand again, and use both your hands to make quick circular movements in opposite directions. Use your thumb to smooth out the shape of the mochi

(Pardon the light. We were all working at night in the backyard kitchen!)

• Sprinkle rice powder on a tray
• Roll the mochi on the rice powder and lay out in rows in the tray. This way they won't stick to each other

Serving the Mochi

• Toast It! Place the stuffed mochi on a charcoal grill or in a toaster oven, and warm for a few minutes, until the mochi develops a light golden crust. Watch out! The mochi will expand, and if left alone the azuki will erupt from the mochi. Shigemi says this will produce a heavenly smell, but quite a sticky mess!
• Soup It Up! Use some of the dough to roll into plain mochi balls to eat with boiled sweetened azuki soup (right). To make the soup, add boiling water to the cooked azuki and sweeten to taste. Shigemi's mother enjoyed this so much she had 3 mochi balls in her soup for dinner, while the boys and I could only manage 1 each!

Old school mochi, made this way without preservatives, keeps for only 2 to 3 days at most. So if you've made more than you can eat, be sure to spread the love around.

WWOOFING in Japan -- Homebrewed Amazake

While WWOOFING on a rice farm near Osaka, Japan, our host Shigemi taught us how to make Amazake, a sweet fermented rice drink which was apparently used as a remedy for summer fatigue as early as in the Edo period. The boost provided by the drink has been compared to an IV drip. And, because the sweetness of the drink is entirely from the fermentation process itself rather than due to any added sweeteners, it can be used as a sugar substitute. (See Grainnaisance and Bittersweetblog for a few recipes using Amazake as a sweetener)

How to Make Koji Rice

At the heart of Amazake is koji -- the essence of Japanese food at large because it is the same rice-based fermenting agent used to make sake, soy sauce, and miso.

Making your own koji rice is a highly involved 2-day process. For the committed, check if your local Japanese specialty store sells koji spores (picture of a packet on the right) or else order them online at GEM Cultures. Then follow these step-by-step instructions on how to make your own koji rice on Everything 2. Alternatively, Vision Brewing sells koji-seeded rice and instructions how to use it to "koji-fy" a larger batch of rice for use.

How to Make Amazake

Use 2 portions of Japanese short-grain rice for every 1 portion of koji. Also, have a thermometer handy.

• Use 5-7 cups of water for every cup of regular rice
• Cook the regular rice until it becomes porridge (40-60 minutes)
• Cool the porridge until it reaches between 50 deg C and 60 deg C
• Mix koji into the porridge thoroughly
• Keep the mixture between 50 deg C and 60 deg C for 10 hours (If using a rice cooker, use the “keep warm” function, and keep the rice cooker lid open if the mixture needs cooling)
• NOTE: If mixture spend an extended period at more than 60 deg C, it won't become sweet. If below 50 deg C, the mixture becomes sour
• During the 10 hours, stir the mixture thoroughly every 2-3 hours. Wash mixing spoon with boiling hot water before stirring the mixture. This kills off any germs
• After 10 hours, the mixture is sweet

To Serve Amazake as a hot drink...

• Mix a 1 portion of water for every 1 portion of fermented ice mixture
• Bring the mixture to a boil, and let boil for 5 minutes
• Add a pinch of salt and grated fresh ginger to the mixture to taste

Refrigerate the boiled mixture above to serve as a refreshing cold drink, or freeze it to serve as a sherbet-like dessert!

 

Other Amazake homebrewers: In the Mood for Food, Homegrown Evolution and Prairie View

Grandma's Ang Chow (Foochow Red Rice Wine)

Above: Absolut Vintage

 

After a 3-week whistlestop tour of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, we're back in Singapore briefly, primarily to celebrate my maternal Grandma's 95th birthday.

I could babble on and on about how and why Grandma is my role model. A few inadequately short anecdotes: she fought my grandfather to get her daughters secondary education (a privilege usually reserved only for sons in that generation), managed most of the finances and customer relations at my grandfather's tailoring business, spent many of her retirement years cooking up a storm of of delectable treats and sewing epic cross-stitch landscapes to raise funds for her church, and even now, is on top of all the ins and outs of all the clan's happenings probably more than any other younger individual in the family.

I spent many pf my younger years poring over Grandma's cross-stitch books and projects and skeins of threads. From time to time I also played the role of kitchen hand (or more probably kitchen underfoot) when she made Nonya desserts such as ondeh-ondeh or ang ku kueh, but stupidly was too young and clueless then to take detailed notes. Now that my interests have drifted and taken firm root in the kitchen, however, I'm racing to learn and collect as many of Grandma's old-school family recipes as I can.

Top on this list is her homemade Foochow Ang Chow (red rice wine), an increasingly disappearing craft in ultra modern Singapore. This recipe is Grandma's, handed down to my Mum, and now handed down to me, and all of you!

To Mum's credit, it sounds like she's improved on the original -- Grandma prefers Mum's wine to her own, so now has a call option on a portion of each batch of wine Mum makes!

 

Ingredients

2kg glutinous rice
5 pieces jiu piah (wine cake, right) from Chinese medical hall or grocery
75g ang kek bee (red yeast rice, right)
1/2 cup water, boiled, then cooled back down to room temperature
1 big glass or clay container with cover

*Top tip from Mum*: The wine cakes affect the taste of the wine significantly. Experiment with vendors until you get a taste you like, then stick to them like white on rice (or in this case red on rice).

 

Directions

• Wash and soak glutinous rice for at least 3 hours (preferably overnight), completely submerged in water
• After soaking, drain the water. Use fingers to poke holes all over the tray of levelled rice. The holes serve 2 purposes. From the holes, we can see the level of water. We want it to be half the depth of the rice. The holes also help the rice to cook faster
• Steam the rice for 30 min or until it is thoroughly cooked
• Loosen and spread the rice out to cool completely

 

 

• Dry-blend the wine cakes and the red yeast rice and pour the resulting pink powder into a big bowl
• Wet your hand in cooled boiled water
• Take handful of the cooled cooked glutinous rice (see photo below for approximate size of 'handful' and coat it with the pink powder)

 

 

• Put the powder-coated glutinous rice into a big container
• Repeat coating the handfuls of rice and placement in container until all the glutinous rice and powder is used up
• Use any remaining water to rinse any remaining glutinous rice or powder from working bowls into the large container

*Top tip from Mum*: If globs of rice fall on the floor, leave it and throw away. Do not pick it up and rinse and put it in the container. Bacteria picked up can ruin the wine.

 

 

• Place the container's cap, but do not tighten
• Set aside container in a cool dark place for 7 days
• On the 7th day, stir mixture in container then replace the cover, again loosely
• Set aside for another 23 days
• Harvest the wine and the rice residue on the 30th day

*Top tip from Mum*: It is imperative not to screw on the container's cap tight, as the fermenting process produces a lot of gas. Grandma once had a new, not-yet-fully-orientated housekeeper who took the initiative to screw on the container's cap. A few days later the container exploded in the middle of the night, scaring everyone in the house half to death! It didn't help that the bright red contents of the jar made the room look like the climax of Stanley Kubrick's film rendition of Stephen King's The Shining.

 

Harvesting the Ang Chow and Wine (Day 30)

 

 

The fermented mixture is in two sections, the bulk of which is on top. Scoop the drier fermented ang chow at the top of the container into jars. (This is a great opportunity to recycle coffee and salsa etc glass jars.)

 

 

Place a sieve on a pot and drain the wetter ang chow until most of the wine is in the pot. Scoop the drained residue in the sieve into jars. This residue is the key ingredient in the signature Foochow dish Ang Chow Mee Sua soup, usually eaten on a birthday or as part of a wedding because of its auspicious colour.

 

 

You'll end up with a couple of large jugs of cloudy wine.

Stick a funnel into a screwcap bottle (another great recycling opportunity), and hold a muslin sieve (or coffee 'sock') above the funnel. Slowly ladle the cloudy wine into the sock and let the clear wine drip through into the bottle.

 

 

The "cloudy" residue collected in the sock can be jarred separately and used as a very tasty coating for Ang Chow Fried Chicken and Ang Chow Fried Fish.

Cap the bottles of wine. The wine can be used for marinating meat and cooking, but also tastes pretty damn good on its own! Left alone, the wine will continue to mature.

In the spirit of being investigative (ahem) Mum and I did a sampling of a couple of ang chow wine vintages. The lighter wine you see here is 2 months old, and had a lighter, fruity taste, which could work as a hefty dessert wine. The darker wine on the right is 8 months old, and had a heavier, Chinese-herb-wine-esque taste.

Practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine prescribe this wine to por, or "mend" the health and strength of mothers who have just given birth. They also recommend this wine for lowering cholestrol (check with your doctor first though!)

 

 

Wine making anywhere is an art, and the variations and idiosyncracies of each winemaker are integral to the craft. Here are a couple of slightly different recipes I found elsewhere on the web for further reading if interested.

• Home Cooked Food
• A Singaporean Uncle in Australia

Singapore Hainanese Chicken Rice -- for In the Bag (August)

I'd been sitting on this post, since my Mum and I made Singapore Hainanese Chicken Rice together for the first time in London when she came to visit recently. Then I saw "chicken, red chilli and garlic" as the key ingredients for the August "In The Bag" recipe competition on Julia Parson's A Slice of Cherry Pie blog, and decided to make the most of sitting around in a laundromat in Tallinn, Estonia!

Hainanese chicken rice is a signature local fast food dish in Singapore, available at just about every corner coffee shop and food court. A plate for 1 usually costs between S$2-5, depending on the fanciness of the purveyor (I think the Chatterbox Cafe at Mandarin Meritus still holds the record at S$22). Almost every Singaporean you talk to will have a personal favourite chicken rice stall -- some in very obscure neighbourhoods -- but for mainstream and Main Street diners, the ongoing tussle is between the Boon Tong Kee and Five Star chains, who for a few years stubbornly sprouted branches all over our sunny island, always on the same street, always a few doors down from the other. The great gang of guys behind Hungrygowhere.com will have the most comprehensive listing of branches.

So, when a Singaporean moves abroad, sooner or later they learn how to make this dish...or invest in a friendship with someone who does! It sparks delicious and comforting memories of home. A weekend meal with the family. A quick lunch with mates from work. A vaccination against hangover after a night of clubbing, if eaten at a 24-hour chicken rice joint (yes they exist, and I am thankful!).

What delighted me most about making this dish with Mum so far away from my native Singapore was that I was able to source almost all the ingredients from my fortnightly Riverford Organic veggie box, and Queens Park Farmers Market -- an unexpected local and seasonal treat from the UK summer!

This recipe makes 6-8 servings, so have some family or friends come on over.

The Chicken

Ingredients:

• 2 whole chickens, about 1kg each. Preferably free range and organic. These will have great tasting and muscly meat but might be missing some fat that you will need for the rest of this recipe
• 2 or 3 teaspoons salt per chicken (My Mum says 2 for health, I say 3 for taste)
• 1 medium bulb of garlic per chicken, skin left on, cloves lightly bashed
• 1 piece of ginger about 2 fingers big per chicken, sliced thickly and lightly bashed
• 1 pot half full of boiling water. The chicken needs to fit into the pot and be fully immersed, but you don't want too much water as this will mean diluted chicken stock. So you're looking for a pot that is tall rather than wide

Directions:

• Salvage whatever chicken fat you can from around the thighs, necks and butt. Set the fat aside
• Rub salt on the outside of the chickens and inside the cavities
• Stuff the ginger and garlic in the chickens. Use a toothpick to seal the cavities
• Use string to truss up the chickens (under the wings) so that you can lower them into and raise from the pot more easily
• Bring water in the pot to a rolling boil, then turn the heat on the stove down to low
• Place the 1st chicken in the pot and let it cook for 15 minutes. Raise it, let all the water drip out of the cavity, then dunk again, cook for another 15 minutes. Raise, let drip and dunk a 3rd time (i.e. total cooking time is 45 minutes)
• Repeat with the 2nd chicken
• Let the cooked chickens cool to room temperature on a platter
• Set aside the chicken broth in the pot
• Use a carving knife to remove the wings, the breasts from the breastbone and whatever meat you can from the back. Slice the breast meat thickly.
• If you feel sufficiently confidently about your knife skills, remove the bones from the chicken legs and slice thickly. Otherwise, use a sharp and heavy cleaver and chop the legs into thick slices (hopefully without chipping the bones too much)

Chicken Garnish & Gravy

• 2 cucumbers, halved, then thinly sliced on the bias
• 2 large tomatos, halved, then thinly sliced on the bias
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
• 2 stalks spring onion, sliced thinly on the bias
• ~5 tablespoons light soya sauce
• ~2 tablespoons sesame oil
• A splash of chicken broth

Combine all the liquids. Place the vegetable and herbs on the platter of chicken meat, and drizzle on the gravy mix just before serving.

The Rice

Ingredients:

• 6 cups Thai fragrant rice, preferably organic
• Chicken fat, garlic and ginger salvaged from above
• 1 small bundle of screwpine leaves (optional but get it if you can find it at an Asian grocer)
• 18 cups of chicken broth (i.e. 3 cups broth for every 1 cup rice) -- whatever is left over can be served as soup
• 1 wok, or large frying pan
• 1 rice cooker or large saucepan / pot

Directions:

• With the heat under the wok on high, heat up the chicken fat, then toss in the garlic and ginger and fry for ~1 min
• Add the washed uncooked rice, and stir-fry for 2-3 minutes, until the rice is evenly coated in chicken fat
• Fill the rice cooker / pot with the chicken broth from above
• Add the contents of the wok , and the screwpine leaves to the rice cooker / pot
• Cook for ~20 minutes, until the rice is soft and fluffy
  

The Chilli Sauce

Every chicken rice purveyor in Singapore has their house style of chilli sauce (some are known specifically for them) so depending on what floats your boat, you can dial up and down the level of heat, garlicky-ness and gingery-ness. Personally, I like a lot of minced ginger and garlic, which means I ended up with a very pale orange sauce.

• 8-10 large fresh red chillies. If you want extra kick, add 2-4 little birds eye chillies into the mix
• 1 large thumb of ginger, peeled and sliced
• 6-8 cloves of garlic, skinned and sliced
• 2-4 large limes, quartered
• 1/2 tablespoon light soya sauce
• 1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
• A few cilantro leaves for garnishing
• Dark soya sauce, served separately as per diner's taste

Combine the chili, garlic and ginger in a food processor. Thin it out with the lime juice, soya sauce and sesame oil. My Dad and a couple of my friends like to drizzle a lot of dark soya sauce on their rice -- I leave this up to you.

Plating

Garnish and sauce up the chicken and serve on a large platter. Parse out the rice, and place the chilli sauce in a large bowl with a spoon, or else give each diner a little dipping saucer.

Tuck in. Goes great with Tiger Beer!

 

Leftovers

I love to use the cold leftover chicken from the fridge for salad. Goes great with cucumbers, tomato and lettuce (try a mix of romain and butter lettuce or lamb's lettuce)

Be sure to save the chicken bones from the deboning process -- they're great for making chicken stock!

Notes on sourcing (for London / UK readers):

For chicken, I usually go to Sheepdrove Organic Farm , Clare's Organics at Notting Hill Farmers Market on Saturdays, and the Stock Farm stall at Queens Park Farmers Market on Sundays.

For vegetables, I'm a big fan of the Riverford Organic veggie box. You can order extras for your regular box as well. At the farmers markets, I usually end up at the Perry Court Farm stall.

For Asian groceries, I usually nip between Impress Food on Queensway and Tawana on Chepstow Road.

If you try this, let me know how it goes!

Olive Fried Rice, and Summer Veg Griddle & Salad

On a couple of occasions at the finca in Orgiva, Spain, Babs and I had the always-fun opportunity to whip up a meal based on whatever was already in the house and on the land.

The above was a happily successful experiment inspired by the tubs of the unused olive harvest from the winter sitting around in the kitchen and living room, and vague (and delicious) memories of Teochew and Thai olive fried rice.

With 6 cups of rice for 8 diners we thought we might have over-catered as usual -- given there were 2 kids among us -- but the only leftovers was a tiny snack for Zumbar.

Olive Fried Rice

Serves 8

6 cups of brown rice, preferably organic
1 medium bowl of brined olives, pitted (if not already pitted) and finely chopped
1 large onion (about the size of 2 joined fists), finely chopped
1 bulb of garlic, skinned and finely chopped
1/2 cup olive oil, preferably extra virgin and organic
Salt and pepper to season

• A lesson from my mother: The key to frying rice is to fry already-cooked and cooled-down rice, so that the grains don't break up while being tossed about in a wok. So steam your rice at least a few hours ahead of frying or even the night before
• Cook the rice in a rice cooker. If cooking in a pot, use 3 cups water for every cup of rice. Combine the rice and water. Drizzle olive oil and sprinkle salt. Turn the stove heat up to high. When the water boils, turn the heat down to as low as possible, and cover the pot. Depending on how much husk is left on the rice, it can take anything from 15 to 45 minutes to cook. Check by fluffing with a fork and tasting. If it's absorbed all the water but still crunchy, add a little boiling water. If it's cooked but too wet, drain the water and let the stove heat dry the rice for a few minutes
• To fry, add the olive oil to a large wok or pot, turn the stove heat on high and heat for a couple of minutes
• Add the chopped onion and garlic, and fry for a couple of minutes
• Add the olives, and continue frying until the onions goes translucent
• Add the rice, and continue frying until the rice is roughly equally stained by the olives
• Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve up!

To pimp this dish up, consider adding chopped basil. A more traditional Teochew or Thai rendition would likely involve adding minced pork. If going down this route, season the minced pork with light soy sauce and white pepper, and add to the wok after the onions and garlic but before the olives and rice.

Summer Veg Griddle and Salad

For the veggie griddle, I sliced up a few courgettes and red and green peppers (eggplant would work well too) into flat strips, laid them flat on a tray, drizzled olive oil and sprinkled salt, ground black pepper and dried basil and oregano and left it to sit for ~1/2 hour.

Turn the stove heat on medium-high under a griddle pan. Place a layer of the sliced veggies on the pan and leave for 3-5 minutes, then turn over. Continue until you get your desired level of softness and charred-ness.

You can also grill the veggies on an outdoor BBQ, or in a roasting tray in the oven, if you already have one or the other going for a large meal. Both should take about 15-20 minutes, though the roasting option is less likely to produce the smoky and singed-skin effect.

For the salad, dice up some cucumbers and tomatoes (depending on the size of your dining party), add a sprinkle of chopped onion, and drizzle olive oil, a good squeeze of lemon juice or a dash of vinagrette, and a sprinkle of dried basil and oregano, salt and cracked black pepper. Mix, and serve up.