Things to do with rice

[garylkoh]

Staying in the East.....

One of the more popular dishes in Singapore is "Sha Po Fan" or claypot rice. In Hong Kong, it is called "Po Chai Fan" or little pot rice. It's basically a pot of rice with a topping of meat (much like the recipe provided by Tim). It is quick and delicious, and can be prepared in the time it takes to cook a pot of rice.

Ingredients:
4 cups of rice (Thai fragrant rice is best for this dish)
2 pounds of chicken meat (debone a 4lb chicken or boneless thighs cut into bite-sized pieces)
6 pieces Dried Chinese Mushrooms soaked in a bowl of hot water
A "thumb" of old ginger
A bulb of garlic
One red chilli pepper
a couple of tablespoons of oyster sauce
a couple tablespoons of Chinese cooking wine (shao-xing or fa-tiu)
a couple teaspoons of soy sauce
a teaspoon of raw sugar

Wash the rice, and cook using the prescribed amount of water minus 1/2 cup in a rice cooker (preferably the Zojirushi recommended in the other thread).

With a mortar and pestle, smash the ginger and the garlic. Pick out and throw away the skins of the garlic from the mess in the pestle. Cut open the red chilli pepper and remove the seeds, smash that too.

In a large mixing bowl, mix the chicken, ginger, garlic, pepper, oyster sauce, wine, soy sauce and sugar. Leave to marinade 30mins.

Heat up a wok (or frying pan) over high heat. Heat 2 tablespoons of peanut oil plus 2 teaspoons of sesame oil until it starts to smoke, but before the fire alarm goes off. Toss in the chicken with all the marinade and allow to sear. Drain the mushrooms and toss them into the wok as well. Turn over the chicken pieces to sear the other side.

You can also put some of the water used to soak the mushrooms into the wok about now. Be sure you leave the grit behind. Take the wok off the heat.

By now, the rice cooker should be beginning to count down to ready. When the timer says 15 minutes, open the rice cooker and toss all the chicken in the wok on top of the rice. Make sure you scrape all the yummy gummy bits on the bottom of the wok onto the rice. Cover the rice cooker.

When the cooker beeps, the meal is ready.

Serve with stir-fried vegetables cooked in the "dirty" wok.

[mep]

My usual Friday night meal comes from my favorite Thai restaurant in Bloominginton, IN-My Thai. They make a fried rice dish called "Drunken Man Fried Rice" that you can get with beef or chicken breast. I always get it with chicken breast and I order it "Thai Hot" as I love spicy food. I buy two orders of it and we have it for dinner on Friday night and brunch on Saturday. It's just as good on Saturday as it is on Friday, maybe just a little bit hotter on Saturday which is fine.

I'm going to have to buy one of the super rice cookers. I use a Black and Decker steamer as my rice cooker and it does a great job ( 1 1/2 cups of rice to 1 3/4 cups of water). I typically only cook with Thai Jasmine rice for all of my oriental dishes. It would be interesting to see if the rice could get much better.

[garylkoh]

Yum! Khao Pad Kee Mao or fried rice for a sh*t drunk man. I haven't had that for a very long time. I'll have to hunt up a recipe and try making it.

Another of my favorite Thai fried rice dishes is Khao Pad Nam - or fried rice with preserved black olives. I haven't made that for years either. When I get both right, I'll post recipes here. Looks like my kids are going to get Thai food this weekend.

[mep]

Gary-I have tried to replicate the recipe and I just can't. They have a spice in there that I haven't figured out yet. I love how the sweet basil offsets the heat of the dish. I love all of the green and red bell pepper strips and the HEAT of the dish. I will be having round two in just a few minutes.

[garylkoh]

mep, there are many "secrets" with Thai dishes:

1) There are numerous types of Thai basil - each tasting different. For Pad Kee Mao (PKM) it's Thai Holy Basil (not the one with the purple stems commonly sold as thai basil)
2) Thai fish sauce taste very different from Vietnamese fish sauce and taste very different from Chinese fish sauce. For Thai fish sauce, I use the three crabs brand (it's got a purple label and has 3 crabs on it - I'm at the airport, so can't give you the exact brand).
3) Instead of cane sugar, it's probably coconut flower sugar. That has a more unctuous taste and cuts the heat better. I've never been able to find the real stuff, but the Indonesian Gula Jawa and the Malaysian Gula Melaka are decent substitutes.