Sunday April 16, 1995

Chicken and Rice

And as we are at collecting all the little things we need today to get the cooking going, also plan to have some ginger, fresh cucumber and (maybe) some hot chili.

It was a really good idea of man to invent the fire a couple of years back, so it is a lot easier now to prepare what we are planning today. Without the fire being at our command, we would have quite a bit of a problem to boil the chicken with some salt (about a tea spoon). But as we have it - the fire, we might as well use it and I can start our today's dish with this seemingly simple statement

Boil the chicken with some salt.

The taste of the broth that we get by doing so will get a lot better if we add a bit of cilantro root while the chicken is cooking. Most of the cooking should be done by slow simmering until the chicken meat is nice and tender.

After we reach this milestone we turn off the heat, take the chicken out, de-bone it and cut the meat into small pieces. And certainly keep the broth, we will need it. Broth is something we can always use as you might have noticed in earlier recipes.

Now heat a pot and fry some crushed garlic in a bit of oil until brown and add some raw rice. Here my usual remark that brown rice is used best. Did you know that brown rice if it's grown the right way (naturally with lots of time - yang - and no artificial fertilizers) has everything a human body needs? We roast this rice we added to the oil and garlic until it turns golden and starts to fill the kitchen with a wonderful aromatic smell.

If you have a rice cooker you can give the content of the pot into it, add the correct amount of chicken broth and cook it. If you don't have the cooker you add the broth to the content of the pot and cook the rice until good. Because of the intense heat during roasting the time to cook the rice will be a bit shorter than normal.

If you still have some broth left it can make a good soup with some vegetable added and seasoned with a little soy sauce.

Dinner is nearing it's completion. We just need some dressing and sliced cucumber to eat with the rice and chicken. Here is how I prepare this dressing (or sauce).

Blend some crushed ginger in a mortar or blender. If you really like it hot you can add some chili, but my all-time favorite is ginger, so I take a lot of that and mostly forget about the chili. To this add some black bean sauce, soy sauce, lime juice and a little bit of brown sugar. Dr. Edler, you can leave that out, it's not very important. I think sugar can be left out from all my recipes, maybe except the desserts. Make the taste adjustments to get it just right for you - the goal is to have it a bit on the sour side.

So, we have it all together. The rice is cooked, and the chicken chunks with the cucumber and the sauce go with it. And if you were so lucky to have enough broth you can also enjoy some soup.

Bon appetit!