"There are very few writers who are not cranks in some way."

Paul Theroux, an American writer and novelist, said that. Given his own checkered reputation, he probably said it in his own defence! I chose this quote this morning because the one I skipped would have led me into the vertical takeoff rant again, and getting embroiled in that would have made me grumbly all day, thus satisfying at least one of the definitions of crank.

( Are all writers cranks? )

(Also posted to Writing on the Edge of the Wood)

Harper's Kitchen: Chicken Rice!

Most of you know that my family and I spent several months in Singapore, in 2005. Some of you know that I mostly hated Singapore and that the best part about our time in Singapore was the fantastic last two weeks when we had khaosworks back from the US and hanging out with us for awhile. I'm sure I talked about the terrific food in Singapore, about the prawn mee right across the street from our apartment, about our forays to hawker centres with some friends I knew from a former online hobby, how there is simply no substitute for bak kwa (which I may or may not be spelling right), and how sometimes I think about the things I liked about Singapore in order not to dwell on the things I disliked about it.

Yesterday, I found myself struggling with a serious craving for chicken rice, which became a staple of my diet in Singapore. Now, various quick explanations of chicken rice will tell you that the chicken is either roasted or boiled, but yesterday I went recipe trawling, mostly going through food blogs based in Singapore, and I came across a couple of recipes that explain how the chicken is actually cooked: it's put in a pot of boiling water, and then the heat is turned off. The chicken is steamed, but makes its own broth (which is then used in the preparation of the rice) at the same time! Most peripheral explanations of chicken rice just tell you that the rice is prepared using chicken stock instead of water, and I've done that with good results. What they don't tell you that the recipes I found yesterday do is that, like most dishes that taste amazingly good and are completely addictive, chicken rice has an unhealthy secret. Before boiling, leftover fat from the chicken is rendered in a saucepan, and the rice is actually cooked in the fat first before chicken stock is added. Some cooks add coconut milk to the rice, but I think I'll stick to the basics.

Right: I've got a big stock-pot, a whole chicken, salt, garlic, cilantro, sesame oil, and ginger, plus plenty of chilli, garlic and ginger for sauces. (Alas, it's almost impossible to find proper dark soy sauce in England; you can only find the thin variety.) Chicken rice for dinner at my place!

Harper's Kitchen: Chicken Rice!

Wow! It really tasted like Singapore.

I took a whole chicken and rubbed it with salt, soy sauce, and sesame oil. I stuffed it with shallots, green onions, garlic and ginger. I put a big stockpot of water on until it was at a rolling boil, then immersed the chicken and turned off the heat. I let it steam for an hour. At the thirty-minute mark, I heated up the water again to make sure I still had enough steam. I took the chicken out and cut off the wings and legs, then added them to the stock and put it on to a hard boil until it was way boiled down, two or three hours.

Then I took Thai jasmine rice and rinsed it, rendered the chicken fat (just a few tablespoons), and cooked sliced ginger and garlic in the fat until the saucepan was nicely smelling of garlic. I added the drained rice and stirred it around in the pot until it felt all covered with oil and spiciness, then removed the bits of chicken skin that were left. Then I added about three cups of chicken broth, just a little more than would cover the rice, and brought it all to a boil. I stirred and stirred until the water level was below the top of the rice, then covered it tightly and turned down the heat. I let it simmer for 10 minutes, then turned the heat off completely and gave it another 10 minutes to steam.

I cut the chicken off the carcass and cut it up into bite-sized pieces, then served it over rice with the actual, real Singapore dark soy sauce my husband found at a London Asian market, hooray! If anybody had wanted it, I would have produced Thai sweet chilli sauce, because I didn't feel like making my own chilli/garlic/ginger sauce (it's too hot for me!). I was going to serve the rice with little sprigs of coriander, but by the time it was done, everybody was so hungry I didn't even cut up the cucumber to serve with it: guess we'll have cucumber for salads later this week.

Success!

To answer an earlier question: In Singapore and I would assume in other Asian countries as well, there are several different grades and varieties of soy sauce. The kind most commonly called "dark" soy sauce is not only very dark but also quite thick. It has some added sugar and is used both in the preparation of food and as a dipping sauce.