Delicious experiments with Hainanese Chicken Rice

I have wanted to try Hainanese Chicken Rice for quite awhile now, after seeing it on lots of travel shows and reading about it on lots of food blogs. Since there are approximately zero restaurants anywhere around here that serve something like that, we decided to go ahead and make it ourselves.

We used this recipe, in combination with some other recipes we found around the internet, and the results were great. Hainanese Chicken Rice seems like such a simple dish, but just under the surface it is more complex and delicious. We used lots of ginger flavors--in the chicken, in the rice, in the dipping sauce, and everything was kind of permeated with this gingery goodness. The gingery rice was so good that I was eating it with everything, and I used all the leftover ginger dipping sauce finding new and exciting things to dip it in. Plus the different preparation helps guard against any Roast Chicken Fatigue that we local eaters might have experienced in a long winter of lots of meat and not many vegetables.

Our finished product (garnished with some raw turnip slices). Deeeeelicious.

Adobo!

I've been reading about this dish called adobo for several weeks, and then last week I couchsurfed with some wonderful people in Dayton, and they made bison adobo for dinner. Well then, of course I had to try it for myself! Adobo is a Filipino dish of meat braised in soy sauce and vinegar, and it's pretty damn delicious. Pork is probably the most common meat to use, but I had bought some chicken thighs earlier in the week, so that's what went in.



Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the finished dish - that's the meat waiting to go back into the sauce. If I remember tomorrow, I'll take a picture of everything on my plate.

Ingredients
Meat - I used about a pound and a quarter of bone-in chicken thighs
Vinegar - I combined balsamic and red wine, but I would have used rice vinegar if I hadn't dropped my bottle on the floor the other day *grumble grumble*
Soy sauce - I combined regular soy sauce and kecap manis to counteract the vinegar with some sweetness
Black pepper, cracked or ground - grinding it will save you the trouble of picking out peppercorns in the finished dish
Bay leaf
Onion, thinly sliced - I used one, but two would be better
Garlic, minced - four or five cloves

Cooking
In a Dutch oven or other large pot, quickly brown the chicken on all sides, then add the garlic and onion. When the onion softens (just a few minutes), add the vinegar, soy sauce, bay leaf, and black pepper, bring to the boil, and then simmer until the meat is cooked through. Reduce the sauce until it thickens slightly, and serve over rice.

Believe it or not, that's the basic recipe. I went further and fished out the chicken, then cut the meat off the bones and diced it into bite-size pieces, then added it back to the reduced sauce to glaze it. I just didn't want to be bothered with slicing meat off the bone while I was trying to enjoy my dinner!

As I noted above, I only used one onion tonight, but it gets so deliciously caramelized while simmering in the sauce that I'm definitely using two next time. The only problem with this dish as I made it tonight is the saltiness, brought on by all that tasty soy sauce. Next time I'm going to slice a potato and add it with the liquid, as I'm pretty sure potatoes can be used to absorb salt and then discarded.

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Something else that I don't have a picture of is a great broccoli stir-fry that I made a few days ago. I used garlic, ginger, sesame oil, and doubanjiang, which is a Sichuan paste of fermented broad beans and chilis. The brand I have is Ming Teh, and it is pretty fantastic stuff.

Broccoli stir-fry
Heat a wok or cast iron pan (I don't have a wok) over high heat, and add about a tablespoon of oil - something with a high smoke point, like peanut or canola or corn. When it shimmers, add some minced garlic and ginger, and a couple tablespoons of doubanjiang. Stir-fry for about a minute, then add broccoli florets and stir-fry for another two minutes or so, until it's coated in the sauce. Turn off the heat, toss with a bit of sesame oil, and eat!

Three Cups Swiss Chard, Modified (plus extra pictures)

A couple of weeks ago, I read a recipe for Three Cups Chicken on Appetite for China. It looked quite tasty and easy, so I saved it for future reference - it's a Taiwanese recipe that involves braising chicken in equal parts sesame oil, rice wine, and soy sauce. Then today, I picked up some great-looking red chard at the market, and was fishing for a way to season it up. I decided to try the three cups seasoning, although I remembered it as using rice vinegar instead of rice wine. So I tossed some ginger and garlic in a hot pan, then added the chard to wilt it quickly, added soy sauce, vinegar, and oil, covered the pan for about ten minutes, and the results are below. It was delicious! The vinegar taste balanced out by the slight sweetness of the sesame oil, and the soy sauce just added a slight earthiness to the whole dish.



This next picture is of a quick stir-fry I cooked up last week when I needed dinner on short notice. I don't remember exactly what was in it, but it was definitely at least onions, green onions, cilantro, garlic, and some seasoning sauces.



On to baking! These are some beautiful corn muffins I made, based on my mom's recipe. Here's my version:

Ingredients
1 cup AP flour (160 grams)
1 cup or 190g cornmeal
1/3-1/2c or 100-130g sugar depending on how sweet you like it
2-3 tbsp or ~70g vegetable oil
1 egg
1c milk or water (~240g)
2-3 tsp baking powder (12-18g)
1/2 tsp salt

Directions
Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Beat the egg and mix with the oil and milk/water. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mixing until they're just combined - lumps are fine. Don't overmix. Fill six muffin cups evenly and bake for 20-25 minutes depending on the consistency of your oven - start toothpick-testing at 20 minutes.




Up next: scones! This is a recipe I made just as Baking Bites' recipe described*, so go there and check it out! They were fantastic - slightly crumbly but moist, and very peanut-buttery.

*One addition I made: I stirred an extra tablespoon of peanut butter in after adding all the liquids. It made for an almost-swirl of peanut butter in the finished scones, since it wasn't completely incorporated, and it was a very good flavor boost.




The last recipe is matzah brei! The recipe I used is almost ridiculously easy, and here it is:

Ingredients
Two pieces matzah
One egg
Water
Salt
Brown sugar (optional)

Directions
Crumble the matzah into small pieces and soak in cold water for a few minutes. It should be soft but not disintegrating. Drain the matzah by picking it up in clumps and squeezing as much water as possible out of it. Beat the egg and combine with the matzah, using a fork to mix them together evenly. Heat 2 teaspoons or so of butter in a pan and add the matzah-egg mixture, then pat it evenly into the pan with a spatula. You're trying to end up with a matzah brei cake like in the picture below. Slicing the cake into the pieces in the pan will make it easier to flip - brown the cake on both sides and you're done! Garnish liberally with brown sugar and salt. :)