Hainan Chicken Rice with Tiger Beer

I love pairing this dish with a nice crisp lager, pale ale or an IPA. I only drink an IPA when I make the chilli sauce "burn the roof of your mouth" kinda spicy!








INGREDIENTS:
4 uncooked Large chicken drumsticks
1 Liter of water
200grams jasmine fragrant rice
4-6 garlic cloves (I've actually used half a bulb once, but thats cuz I love garlic! It might also explain why im single)
4 thumb sized ginger
1 bunch of spring onion/salad onions/scallions
1 lime
1 bunch of coriander leaves/cilantro (coriander leaf is the same as cilantro)
1 english cucumber
a stick of butter
2 tbsp soy sauce
4 drops of sesame oil
2-4tbsp sriracha chilli sauce
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1tbsp vegetable oil


Instructions:
There are 3 stages to this recipe, the cooking of the chicken, the rice and the lime chillie sauce.










Stage 1:
Add the 4 chicken legs to a large pot with 1.2 Liters of cold water. Then add the 2 thumb sized sliced ginger, salt and half of only the green part of the spring onion. Cook on high heat. Notice that I havent taken off the skin of the ginger here, its no problem, just slice them thinly before adding them to the water. The water in the pot will later take on the flavor of the chicken, onion and ginger.










Once the water starts to boil, turn down the heat to medium level and simmer for 30 mins. As the chicken cooks, you will notice some white scum floating to the top. These are all of the chickens impurities, like blood and dirt, just scoop them up with a little sieve or skimmer.
You can see the white scum in the picture on the left










After 25 mins, throw away the ginger and spring onions, and take out the chicken drumsticks and put them in a bowl of ice cold water to stop them from cooking. DO NOT throw away the chicken stock!!! We will use this for cooking the rice.

Stage 2: Preparing the chillie sauce and cucumbers
First chop up the cucumber (cucumber is separate from the chillie sauce) like in the picture below.
Leave them in a bowl for later






For the chilli sauce, first peel 1 thumb sized piece of ginger with a potato peeler and cut roughly into small chunks. Then roughly chop up 2 cloves of garlic. Just cut each clove into 4 pieces. Add both garlic and ginger to a blender, with the chillie sauce, juice of one whole lime, sugar, 3 tbsp of the chicken broth you made earlier and blend until a smooth but still thick sauce, remove and put in a small bowl.

Stage 3: Cooking the rice
Peel and slice the remaining ginger and garlic into small cubes like in the picture below. The garlic should be cut in a similar fashion to get that small cube like shape.











In a pot that has a lid on it, fry the garlic and ginger with the butter and oil on a medium to low heat for 3 minutes. THE GARLIC AND GINGER SHOULD NOT BURN!

Then add the uncooked rice and thoroughly mix it through with the garlic and ginger. Then add 4ooml of the chicken stock, mix once again, put on the lid and put fire to the maximum setting. Reserve the remainder of the chicken stock for your soup.

Once it starts boiling, then turn the fire down to the lowest possible setting and cook for exactly 10 minutes. Then you leave the rice to rest with the lid still on and fire off for another ten minutes.


Stage 4 prep the chicken by using a knife to take it off the bone and add the soy sauce and sesame oil to the chicken

Stuff the rice into a small bowl and the turn it upside down on the plate and garnish with coriander leaves. Lay the chicken around the rice, put the chilli sauce in a small serving bowl, add the cucumber. Chop up some spring onions and put in your soup and season with salt and pepper to taste
The last two photos were taken of two attempts to make this dish. ENJOY!!!

Chicken in a Bag

Chicken in a Bag


Ok I hope you liked my last post about the Hainanese Chicken rice!!! although very delicious, it took quite a while to make it and there were a lot of initial steps that had to be performed before you could actually eat!

So I thought of a recipe which is much simpler and way less effort!

I saw this recipe on Jamie Olivers show and decided to add a few more ingredients to it:

2 chicken breasts
2tsp thyme
2tsp rosemary
2tsp dried chilli flakes
2tsp salt
2tsp black pepper
200ml dry white wine
2 sticks of butter
olive oil
10 new potatoes (these are the small variety)
12 florets of brocolli
6 cloves of garlic
6 large mushrooms sliced f
Aluminium foil
This dish serves 2 people


I love pairing this dish with a Hefeweizen, blonde ales and pale ales.

This recipe requires you to make two parcels out of aluminium foil, each parcel being the portion for one person. So that means you use half the ingredients that i have listed above per parcel. So you use 3 garlic cloves per person instead of 6, and 1 tsp per parcel instead of 2, got it? Why cook like this? Because when you cook chicken in this manner it steams in its own juices and hold all the flavor in the package. The ingredient list above represents the total amount for two people.

Instructions:
Step 1: Wash the brocolli and potatoes then cut off 8 large florets from the brocolli and cut those in half again. Scrub the potatoes clean from any dirt on it, no need to peel them unless you absolutely want to. Cut the potatoes into smaller pieces like in the picture below. Then put the brocolli and potatoes in the same bowl and set aside.


step 2: Finely chop the garlic into small cubes and slice the mushrooms and put it in the bowl with the potatoes and brocolli. Pour some olive oil into the same bowl and mix it with your hands, covering the oil on the potatoes, mushrooms, brocolli, then add 1 tsp of the thyme, rosemary, chilli flakes, the equal amount of 4 cloves of garlic, salt and black pepper, with 2 sticks of butter. Make sure all the spice is evenly covering everything in the bowl.

Step 3: Scoring the bird
Start preheating your oven at 275 degrees C.
Score the chicken with a knife, but be careful not to cut all the way through the chicken. Then rub the remaining butter, pepper, rosemary, thyme garlic and salt onto the chicken and into the slits.










Step 4: Sealing the parcel
Layout your foil across you work space, put the chicken in the middle and surround it with the potatoes, mushrooms, brocolli all the while making adding some extra butter on the chicken.









Fold the both sides towards the middle,. Before closing completely I add in the white wine.

I usually wrap the parcel one more time with another piece of foil just to be sure that its all closed.










Now we put it in the oven on 275 degrees celcius or the maximum temperature your oven can go for 50 minutes and it should come out looking something like the picture below. Pair it with your favorite beer and voila!

Arvid from Brewcuisine

Stout Burgers with Roast Potatoes

Todays recipe I got from reading "The Best of American Beer and Food" by Lucy Saunders. The unique flavor in this burger comes from the Guinness stout beer...And I have tweaked it a little to suit my own tastes and added some crispy fluffy roast potatoes to it. oh... and i tossed out the bun for the burger... Beer and food pairing suggesstions: porter beer like anchor steam porter or flying dog Gonzo imperial porter, I find the roasted maltiness works well with the caramelised flavors in the burger. Or just finish the rest of your guinness with this meal...

here are the ingredients:












400grams minced beef
3 cloves of minced garlic
1 red onion (finely diced)
1 bottle of guinness stout (Use 4 tbsp of guinness)
400 grams of New Potatoes or any floury potato (For roasts potatoes it is extremely important to have a floury potato)
4 slices of Stale bread (blended into bread crumbs) You can also use unsalted crackers
1 tsp of rosemary
1 tsp of thyme
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp of worcestershire sauce
some olive oil
Dijon Mustard

30 grams of unsalted butter
Salt and pepper to taste (Use sea salt if possible)


Instructions for this Brewcuisine favorite: Basically there are two stages to this recipe, the roast potatoes and the burger.
The brew cuisine Roast Potatoes:
Step 1: Preheat a large pot of water to boiling and put a roasting tin in a heated oven with 3 tbsp of olive oil in it. Meanwhile, peel and cut the potatoes into small chunks, to get an idea on cutting size, refer to the picture below. Add the chunks to the pot of boiling water for 12 minutes, then drain the water and shake the pot with the potatoes still in it until the edges of the potatoes become crumbly and flour-like. See 2nd picture below. The crumbly bits on the outside of the potatoes will crispen up in the oven and give it that lush crispy roast coating.










Step 2: Add the potatoes to your heated roasting tin with oil. Then add plenty of sea salt ontop of the potatoes and black pepper. I used about one tablespoon of salt and a one teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper and I poured some more olive oil ontop of the tats. Then use a spatula to mix the potatoes in the roasting tin making sure that all the oil, salt and pepper evenly covers them.
Step 3: Return the roasting tin with tats to the oven for 15 minutes on 250 degrees celcius or if you use fahrenheit then its about 450 degrees Fahrenheit. They should end up like the pic below. NOTICE that my tats are not evenly colored, this is because the oven I used was uneven, so half way through, I should have turned the roasting tin around to get an even browning.













The Burger:
Step 1: Mix in the rosemary, oregano, thyme, breadcrumbs, garlic, salt, pepper, worcestershire sauce and Guinness with the minced beef. Use your hands to mix everything and evenly distribute all the spices and flavors. Chill for 15 minutes.











Step 2: Then use your hands to make 2 patties out of the beef mixture. As you can see I made quite thick beef burgers. I actually had enough to make two more smaller patties which I saved for next days breakfast.










Step 3: Preheat a non stick pan/skillet on medium heat and cover the base of the pan with a tbsp of oil. Add the beef patties to the pan for 3-4 minutes until you get a nice brown color like in the picture below, then flip it, add the butter and cook for a further 4 minutes. Check out my pics below to see about the ideal color that we are looking for on the meat.











Below is the finished recession proof meal with a dollop of mustard on the burger and the 2nd and 3rd picture is how i used the burgers for some yummy breakfast with brown bread, eggs, cheese, crispy bacon and fried onions! Sweeeeeeettt!!!!!!!












Thanks for reading and check out some of my other recipes! or better yet follow my blog!