Hainanese Chicken Rice: One Pot Protein and Vegetable Recipe

Millions of consumers in Klang Valley have been affected with the recent Selangor water rationing, with two days water supply on, and two days supply cut in order to conserve the use of water as well as even distribution among all consumers. OK lets stop sounding like a SYABAS spokesperson.

As if life as a mother isn't hard enough, I had to now face a new challenge. Managing home cooking and cleaning activities together with the periodic supply cut. With my creative hat on, I worked out several strategies to brave this situation for the coming one month.

One of my strategy is to cook one pot dishes, like fried rice or fried noodles. Of course I have made fried dishes so much that even the kids find it repetitive. And thankfully later I came across this interesting rice cooker recipe for Hainanese Chicken Rice on the Extra Virgin Chef in 5 terrifyingly easy steps.

Having the flair for glorifying simple dishes to fulfill the taste and preference of my audience, I came up with my version, or rather, I was looking for a short cut to cook my rice, protein (chicken), and vegetables in one pot so to minimise the amount of washing I need to do later on, yet provide a complete meal on a nice Sunday morning. 

Yes I cooked this during one of the water supply cut days. And the result was hubby saying 'You need to cook like this more often' which I hope did not mean 'We need to have water cut more often' because it is so not fun not having water running out of my kitchen tap.

Alright so sharing my recipe here, and for a change, with step by step pictures.

You Need:

Whole chicken thighs - 2 pieces

Chopped onion, garlic, leek, spring onion

Large slices of ginger

Ginger & garlic paste - 3tbsp

2 cups of chicken stock

2 cups of rice

Butter

Oil

Salt & pepper

Broccoli and cauliflower florets

Carrot - sliced

Method:

1) Marinate the whole chicken thighs with some salt, pepper and 1 tbsp of ginger & garlic paste and set aside.

2) Turn on the rice cooker with the empty pot in place. Once hot enough, pour some oil and butter.

 

3) Add the chopped onion, garlic, ginger, leek and spring onion. Fry till fragrant.

4) After 10 minutes or so, take out 1/3 of the sautee and set aside in a bowl you are going to serve the vegetables in.

5) Add washed rice and the chicken stock. Do adjust the amount of water according to your rice. Cover the rice cooker and let it cook for 10 minutes.

 

6) Open the rice cooker and stir in 2 tbsp of garlic & ginger paste. Then place the chicken thigh on the rice and cover the rice cooker to cook on auto mode.

7) Once the rice cooker is on 'keep warm' mode, open it and place the steamer basket with your vegetables on it, sprinkle some salt and pepper. Cover it and allow the vegetables to cook for 10 minutes.

8) Once the 10 minutes is over, take the steamer basket out, and cover the cooker again. Stir your vegetables into the bowl of the sautee we saved earlier. Add more butter if you want and its ready.

And your wholesome one pot dish is done! You can garnish your dish with coriander leaves, and serve some sliced cucumber.

This recipe is very much like my claypot chicken rice version minus the usage of the brown/caramel sauces. 

The trick to achieving a moist and yummy rice is being generous with the oil and butter. So moist that you will not miss having no gravy (ala Indian style) in your meal. Happy trying!

Palak Paneer Mini Pies Recipe

The last one month has been a fun and totally fun time diving back into my culinary interest. On both cooking and eating side. For my second 5th wedding anniversary, that is the anniversary of my second wedding ceremony (with the same husband) we had our families over and I was so into the mood to cook up several storms.

I had this canned spinach that I wanted to make into a pie, however my pie crust skills leaves a lot to be desired. Since I had some popiah skin in the freezer, I got inspired to make mini pies in the muffin tray instead.

Initially it was meant to be western spinach with ricotta cheese pie. But later I had my mom driving up with a packet of paneer (that is Indian cottage cheese), and so I did not have to go out hunting for ricotta at all. So here is the recipe for you to see, try and savour them!

You Need:

Chopped onion & garlic
1 can spinach
2 tbsp cumin powder
2 tbsp coriander powder
1 cup milk
some salt & pepper for seasoning
some grated cheddar cheese
some olive oil
Baking spray to grease the muffin pan
Popiah skin
1 cup paneer, defrosted

Method:

1) Sautee onion and garlic in the olive oil till fragrant. Add the spinach, cumin and coriander powder and let it cook for 5 mins.
2) Add the milk and let it cook for 10 to 15 mins and simmer.
3) Once the mixture has reduced, add the paneer and season with salt and pepper.
4) Turn the fire off and let it cook for 10-20mins.
5) Grease the muffin pan with baking spray.
6) Lay one layer of popiah skin. Spray another layer of baking spray, and lay another layer of popiah skin in a way that the corners are not on top of each other.
7) Put your spinach filling in. Top it up with cheddar cheese. Repeat this for all mini pies.
8) In a preheated oven bake at 150C for 15 to 20 mins till brown and crispy.
9) Let it cool and then you can literally dig in.

We usually store the paneer in the freezer, and defrost it right before cooking. The best way to cook paneer is to shallow fry it and keep it aside while you cook the gravy. Only in the end you can put the paneer in without worrying that it might break up. They don't really need much to be cooked. However in this case I had mashed the paneer, so it was important to put it into the whole dish and let it incorporate.

My sister swears it turned out to be traditional Indian Palak Paneer instead of the western intention. Which anyhow is a good thing considering we were all waiting to have it into our tummies!

And what else is new, or rather green, other than my palak paneer? Well I am developing and exploring into a new interest. That is growing my own vegetable patch. So here is a glimpse of my tiny sprouts coming out of the choy sum seeds.

It is thrilling to see them come up like that with my TLC. Still hope I would manage to eat them once they grow up green and healthy!

In-house Google

We have a system in the house that everything is well accounted for, as fast as you can Google it. It is very efficient, not just keeps track of the location all the time, but also different separated parts of it. As much as I would like it, no I did not develop an in-house Google for us. Neither do we have a GPS tracking system to track whereabouts of every item. I am THE Google.

Long before I got married I had read in a Marian Keyes book, something in the lines of 'after getting married she became the lady who knew where everything was'. Obviously the requester is the husband, of course. Where is my socks, where is my laptop, where is the cup, where is ABCXYZ, despite all little things remaining at their original places, there is always this question, Where?

Little did I know once having kids, they join the team of 'requesters', and send out a search party every time they lose something. Except for this is a party of one, ME.

The kids have all kinds of toys. Transformers of different sizes and functions. A set of Iron-Men. Ben10 and his gang. Ben10 with an astronaut-like armor and head gear. Some Lego men, with cool helmets. Some robotic toys that fully come apart into skeletons. And many other figurines.

And glory to the inventors, most of these toys can be dismantled, or transformed, or have flexible head/limbs that come off. And thanks to the kids' curious nature, their favourite past time is to dismantle, or take the head/limbs off, put them all over the house and then forget about it.

Then in all randomness they suddenly come up to me and ask, where is my Ben10 head, where is Ironman head, where is ABCXYZ? And sometimes a certain forgotten abandoned figurine like Mr Incredible becomes a total hot cake when all of a sudden they catch a glimpse if it on TV. And they would demand for it immediately.

For the sanity of mankind, and mostly myself, I have archived (stowed away) most of their unused and redundant toys into the store room. Thanks to TV shows, adhoc search requests come up from time to time. The search party does its job.

Learning from my massive search efforts, I have made it a habit to pick up every single head, limb or helmet that I see on the floor and keep it in a corner. Sooner or later one boy will come up and 'google' for it, and I would just point towards it. I am Google.