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!!!