Rainy Day Recipe: Chicken Stuffed with Sticky Rice

The thing I like best about the rainy season is that the cooler temperature lends itself to the consumption of soups and savory-rich dishes. A warm, aromatic bowl of soup becomes a restorative pleasure, and having to stay indoors suddenly doesn’t seem to be a bad idea, after all.

I chanced upon this recipe in some blog, but I forgot to bookmark it. Darn! The author, a Korean living in the US, was talking about missing her mom’s Ginseng Chicken Soup. She set about cooking the dish herself to ease away the homesickness and perhaps cure a variety of real or imagined ailments.

I loved the idea of stuffing a small chicken with spices and letting it boil down into a tender, pure-chicken broth. It’s best to get a smaller chicken, preferably even less than a kilo so that the flavor is stronger. Native, free-range chicken is ideal, if you can get it. I imagined the glutinous rice to be a warm, sticky, spice-infused yumminess. I never forgot the basic principle of this dish, and like the author who was homesick, I set out to create this dish myself. I didn’t have ginseng on hand, so I figured ginger will work, since I like ginger anyway. I added in the mushrooms for their earthy, nutty flavor, and as a succulent complement to the chicken.

The result was a dish that pleased. The broth was clear but quite savory, the chicken meat tender and very clean tasting. Simmering the dish for at least an hour cooks the rice wonderfully, and gives it the consistency of a creamy risotto.

This is one of those assemble-in-a-pot-and-then-walk-away types of dishes, so it’s easy to pull off. Even if you’re feeling a wee bit under the weather. Recipe below, get cooking!

* Don’t mind the potato in the photo. I just put  it in there to cook for my son, who likes potatoes.

Chicken Stuffed with Sticky Rice
(ala Korean Ginseng Chicken)

Serves 3-4

1 kilo spring chicken (young native chicken is best)

½ cup glutinuous rice (malagkit rice)

Salt, to taste

Fresh-ground black pepper, to taste

4-6 coriander seeds

3-4 fennel seeds

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 medium onion, cut into wedges

1 thumb-sized ginger, crushed

3-4 wild mushrooms, washed and left whole

2 stalks spring onions, cut diagonally

1 liter water (to start)*

*More if needed to cover chicken.

Wash chicken thoroughly, then pat dry. Rub the cavity of the chicken with a generous amount of salt and pepper, making sure to coat insides well. Pour in ½ cup glutinous rice into the cavity. Insert coriander seeds, fennel seeds, garlic cloves, ginger, and onion wedges. Put in the mushrooms, taking care not to break them. Seal the cavity by pulling the skin over the opening and securing with a toothpick.

Place the chicken inside a tall, roomy pot. Pour in water until chicken is almost fully covered. Make sure the chicken floats and does not touch the bottom of the pot. This may seem like a lot of water, but it will boil away. You may need to add more later if you want lots of soup. Cover and wait for the water to boil, then reduce heat to the lowest setting. Simmer covered for at least 1 hour, up to 1 ½ hours.

The chicken is done once the meat on the legs begins to pull away from the bone. Taste the soup and adjust seasonings if necessary. I’ve cooked this dish three times and did not need to re-season, as the broth is meant to be delicate, but savory.

Remove from heat, transfer to a big serving bowl and sprinkle with spring onions. Split the breast cavity to release the fragrant, steaming rice inside.

Into the Bowl: Noodles Korean Style

Sometimes when I get home late and don’t particularly like what’s been left for me at the dinner table, I turn to a comforting noodle dish. Inspired by Korean noodle dishes such as guksu and japchae, this is a steaming bowl of goodness that’s so savory yet easy to do, with minimal cooking involved.

I used buckwheat vermicelli in this dish, but other types, such as brown rice vermicelli or regular vermicelli will work fine. I like plenty of scallions, ginger, and garlic in the soup. The broth is made more savory with the distinctive taste of the toasted nori. The egg swimming in the broth, once broken and swirled into a yummy soup, ups the comfort factor. The soothing combination of hot broth, the spicy and sweet, the various tastes and textures, helps ease away the cares of the day.

This is not such a difficult dish to pull off. The key is in the assembly of ingredients.

Noodles Korean Style

single serve buckwheat vermicelli noodles (or regular vermicelli)

2 cups water (add more if needed)

2 TBsps. ground pork

salt and pepper to taste

½ tsp. light soy sauce

½ tsp. sesame oil

pinch of brown sugar

1 clove garlic, chopped

¼ tsp. finely chopped ginger

scallions, sliced on the diagonal

dried mushrooms, soaked in cold water, then sliced

nori strips

pinch of chili powder (optional, skip if you don’t like spicy)

1 medium egg

Soak vermicelli in a bowl of cold water. In a saucepan, bring two cups of water to a rolling boil. Drain vermicelli into a wire mesh strainer. Submerge vermicelli in boiling water for 5 minutes, drain, and then arrange in a serving bowl.

Keep the remaining water boiling, but set heat to low.

In a separate bowl, mix salt, pepper, and ground pork. Turn up heat to bring water to a boil. Place ground pork in the strainer and lower into the boiling water and let cook, about 5-7 minutes. Once cooked, take out and drain, then place over noodles in the bowl. Do the same with the mushrooms.

Lower heat to keep broth simmering while you assemble the rest of the ingredients in the bowl of noodles. Put garlic, scallions, and ginger, on top of the noodles. Add in light soy sauce and sesame oil, then the brown sugar. Add in nori strips and pinch of chili powder.

Break the egg gently over the noodles.

Turn off heat and pour broth over the noodles. This will cook the egg. Break gently into the soup, swirling to distribute the yolk and mix the ingredients together. Enjoy!

Bad Phad Thai at the Marriott

Some months back, I was suddenly summoned to Cebu, that sun-drenched island in the Visayas. Those who summoned me were kind enough to billet me at the Marriott in Cebu Business Park for an overnight stay.

I arrived close to 8PM, and after concluding a meeting with a lawyer (night time powwows with lawyers are so nerve wracking), I was bone-tired. I nixed plans of going out to dinner and decided to just order room service. A quick browse through the hotel menu led me to a familiar noodle dish, and I phoned in an order for Phad Thai.

What arrived was a doughy, tomato-soaked noodle dish that bore very little resemblance to Phad Thai. There were exactly three pieces of shrimp. There were vestiges of what could have been pork strips, had they been substantial enough to be savored. There were plenty of egg omelette strips and spring onions, but they were not able to salvage this dish. I put in a lot of the crushed peanuts in the hopes of making it more palatable (think texture), but sadly, the sweetish tomato sauce was so overpowering it made me dizzy.
Such a sad meal, and this was the Marriott. It should be hard to make a bad Phad Thai, considering that this is Cebu and the fresh ingredients for the dish (shrimp, vegetables, spices) are plentiful and cheap.

Maybe I should have gone out after all.

For the most part though, in the six years I spent in Cebu, I had a lot of good (often fantastic) food, so this was just one of the very few disappointments. The Marriott somewhat made up for it the next day with a terrific spread at the breakfast buffet, so I didn’t lose all faith.

Eid-ul-Fitr Brought Me Dates

A friend of the Muslim faith gave me some dates in celebration of Eid-ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan.  Also the end of his sun-up to sun-down fasting and the start of much-anticipated feasting. The dates were yummy on their own, but even as I was chewing on them, I was already thinking of saving some for a pairing with homemade toffee sauce.

Now, I’ve never made toffee sauce before, but the basics should be easy —at least that episode I saw on Nigella Bites made it seem so.

Dates in Warm Toffee Sauce

(for 1 cup dates)

3 Tbsp. brown sugar

1 Tbsp. butter

¼ cup milk

Dump sugar and butter in a saucepan. Place over low heat and wait for the sugar to melt. Stir gently as the sugar melts, making sure to mix it well with the butter. The sugar melts and caramelizes fast, so once the mixture is no longer grainy, remove from heat and stir in the milk. Mix thoroughly until you get that golden brown toffee consistency. Pour over the dates.

Snack Attack: Senbei

I have a theory, long-held though never verbalized, until now. I think I must have been a shoujo (Japanese girl) in a past life. Ever since I can remember, I seem to have a desire for all things Japanese—the language, the culture, the art, and of course—the food. Sashimi, soba, sushi. Oh my, I get cravings for these dishes so often, they make my head spin and my mouth water.

Years ago, I remember introducing my ornery older sister to Japanese food. I urged her to try some tuna sashimi with a dot of wasabi. A rather substantial dot, it turned out. She thought I was going to murder her (modus operandi—food poisoning)! But after a few more bites and samples from the menu, she was a convert. Since then, I’ve won over quite a number of non-believers to eating Japanese, and I plan to recruit more.

In summer of this year, I was on a flight that had a stopover at Narita airport. The three-hour wait gave me time to browse through the shelves at a shop chockful of Japanese treats. There was mochi with a dizzying variety of fillings, fish-squid-beef jerkies, strange-looking candies, lovely delicate matcha, and a rediscovered treat: senbei.

Senbei are rice crackers gone Japanese. There is a wide variety of senbei, they can be savory or sweet, flat or tubular, bite-size or in cracker discs. Some imitate sushi, wrapped snug in a square of nori sheet.

The ones I bought were tubular, individually packaged, with 6 flavors to a bag. These are addicting! The subtle taste of the rice cracker is a good base for adding flavors—and what yummy flavors—shoyu dipped, wasabi coated, sprinkled with chili flakes and sesame seeds, or tucked into nori. Crisp bites flooded the mouth with flavors: salty-roasted, caramel-sweet from the soy sauce, or a whiff of sea from the nori. The pink candied variation in the photo above was tinged with rose-infused sugar.

That summer day, I curled up in bed with my bag of senbei and a book, Geisha, A Life by Mineko Iwasaki. Like most things Japanese, it was an inspired combination.

Weekend BBQ!

When I changed jobs and moved to where I am now, I suddenly discovered blocks of free time during the weekends. So, how best to fill up those hours but with a backyard barbeque! We have a small round grill that serves my little household well, and with a few bags of charcoal on hand, barbeque becomes a lazy way to get lunch on the table.

I like to use a thicker-cut slab of pork belly for barbeque because the meat does not dry out and the porky juices are kept sealed in. I also do not trim away the rib bones, since those are great for the messy, hand-to-mouth munching that is the quintessential charm of eating barbeque. That, and also because I like the cartilaginous part that peels away from the bone.

Hot, juicy pork cuts with a slight crisp to the skin and the smoky, scorched goodness that only direct heat can achieve—what’s better than that on a free weekend?

Pork Belly BBQ

Serves 4

3  slabs 1-inch thick pork belly

4  pcs. calamansi, halved

½  cup good quality light soy sauce

½  tsp. brown sugar

4-5 cloves garlic, smashed then chopped roughly

salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Marinate. Season pork belly on both sides with fresh-cracked black pepper and salt. Smash the cloves of garlic with the broadside of a knife, then peel away the skin. Rub the smashed garlic liberally onto the pork belly. Lay pork belly flat in a square dish and pat down. In a small bowl, mix juice of 4 calamansi, brown sugar, and light soy sauce. Pour mixture over the pork belly, making sure all surfaces are coated. Let stand for at least an hour, turning pork pieces over to marinate evenly.

Grill away. Best to use a charcoal grill, as this lends a smoky taste to the meat. Grill 2-3 inches off the coals, being careful not to burn the pork belly in those fat-fueled flare ups. Baste a few times with the remaining marinade. When the bellies are brown on one side, turn over and keep grilling until done. Transfer the bellies to a chopping block and do some quick cuts. I like to separate the ribs and keep them whole, for better munching.  Serve immediately.

Basil Fried Potatoes

Sometimes, a great dish just happens. Not much preparation, not much forethought goes into it, just one key ingredient, a favorite herb, simple garnishings, simple seasonings. The dish above combines the earthy taste of fried potatoes with the fragrant crunch of basil. Drizzled in olive oil, this is comfort food to curl up on the couch with.  And if a beer happens to be nearby, then all is well with the world.

Basil Fried Potatoes

2 medium potatoes, sliced thinly, skin on

1 medium onion, sliced thinly

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

3-4 basil leaves, chopped coarsely

olive oil, a generous drizzle

salt and pepper to taste

Heat a skillet and pour in a tablespoon or two (who’s counting) of olive oil. Fry up the potatoes, making sure to move them around the skillet as their edges brown. Sprinkle garlic and onions halfway through the cooking process so that they crisp with the potatoes, but do not burn. Flip the potatoes over to brown both sides.  Add chopped basil and crisp slightly just until translucent. Season with salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste.

Plop entire contents into a favorite bowl. This is where the drizzling comes in–stream in a little olive oil on top of the potatoes. Carry bowl to couch and dig in with a fork.

Potatoes on the couch for a couch potato. Perfect symmetry.