baked portuguese chicken rice (po gok gai fan)

As my mom grew up in Macau, baked Portuguese chicken rice is one of my favourite things to eat.  It’s not really a Portuguese dish but originates from Macau.  If you’ve never had it before, its basically chicken and potatoes on top of fried rice, smothered in a creamy yellow sauce and then baked.  (And when my uncle took me to my grandpa’s favourite restaurant in Macau to eat this dish, it had chorizo in it too.)  You can easily find this in any Hong Kong style restaurant.  Sounds simple but I had never been able to pinpoint what the exact flavours in it are.

I’ve been craving this dish but short of a plane ride to Vancouver, I was not very close to getting it.  I’ve researched recipes online on and off for months (apparently I have way too much time on my hands!) but none of them sounded quite right to me.  There were certain ingredients which I agreed on but that was about it.  Some have curry powder in it but I’m pretty sure there’s not supposed to be any actual curry; it’s just that the sauce is yellow!  I had the same experience when I wanted to make hong kong style baked pork chop rice and couldn’t find a recipe I liked so I had to come up with my own.  And what’s super exciting (to me anyway) is if you google this dish now, my recipe is the very first link that comes up and I get multiple hits on that recipe from all over the world everyday!  Hopefully this recipe will be just as popular!

This recipe has 3 parts; the fried rice, the chicken, and the sauce:

~ 4 cups of cooked rice that has been refrigerated for at least a few hours, preferably overnight  /  2 large eggs  /  canola oil /  salt and pepper to taste

~ 6 skinless and boneless chicken thighs  /  1/2 medium yellow onion  /  2 cloves garlic  /  1 medium white potato  /  1/2 link of chorizo  /  canola oil  /  salt to taste

1 can coconut milk  /  1 cup chicken broth  /  1 pinch of ground cumin  /  2 tsp ground turmeric  /  3 tbsp cornstarch  /  salt to taste

First, preheat the oven to 350F and then start on the fried rice.  The way I like to make it is just heat up some oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat then add the cold rice in.  Stir around and let it heat up then make a little well in the middle of the rice.  In a small bowl, scramble the eggs with a bit of salt and pepper and then pour into the middle of the rice.  Let it cook for just a little bit then just stir fry it all together until it’s cooked to your liking and then set aside in a large pie plate or casserole.

Next, cube up the potato into roughly 1 inch pieces and bring to a boil in a small saucepan of water until fork tender.  In the meantime, mince the garlic, roughly chop up the onion, slice up the chorizo and cube the chicken thighs again into roughly 1 inch pieces.  Heat up some oil in the frying pan over medium to medium-high heat and toss in the garlic and onion and let it cook a bit.  Add in the chicken and let it brown up a bit and then add the chorizo and potatoes.  Let it cook, giving it a stir every now and again for about 8 to 10 minutes.

Next, throw together the sauce.  In a medium size saucepan over medium heat, mix together the coconut milk, chicken broth, turmeric and cumin.  When it’s heated up a bit, mix the cornstarch with some cold water (it should have the consistency of milk) and then pour that in and bring it to a boil while constantly whisking for at least a minute.  It should thicken up quite a bit.  Season to taste with some salt.

Now assemble it all together.  Layer the chicken, potatoes and chorizo mixture over the rice.  Then pour the sauce all over top.  Toss into the oven and let it bake for about 20 minutes and you’re done!

I’m quite happy with the results!  The sauce tastes really close, I think, to what you can find in restaurants and I think that’s the key part.  If anyone has any suggestions for making this dish, I would love that but overall I’m happy with this.  Rock says it’s very good and tastes like what he’s had out in Vancouver. Yay!

hoi nam gai fan – hainanese chicken rice

I am in the midst of full-on hating life in Saskatchewan.  I miss my family and friends and I miss decent weather.  After 9 months of winter, it’s raining pretty much all the damn time.  Being from Vancouver, I don’t mind rain but that’s cus we’re spared the 9 month winter.  I’m also apparently in the crazy phase of being pregnant and seriously craving all the yummy things that I don’t get to here.  So I’ve decided I just have to up my game and start cooking more Chinese food that I just can’t get here.  I’m sorry but egg rolls and chicken balls are just not Chinese food. OK!  Had to get that all out of my system.

One of the things I miss is hoi nam gai fan, a longtime favourite.  My mom always used to get us takeaway hoi nam gai fan from Richmond so that’s probably why it’s such a comfort food for me.  It’s basically a cold chicken dish served with a flavoured rice and I like to eat it with a ginger-green onion sauce.  So I set out to figure out how to make it and after a first attempt at our friends’ last night, I think it was a success!  I always figured it would be very difficult to make but it was not very hard at all.

A whole chicken  /  2 pieces of ginger root, peeled  /  2 bunches of green onion  /  ~ 3 cloves garlic  /  2 cups jasmine rice  /  canola oil (except my friend Katharina’s much healthier than me and had only avocado oil instead, which turned out great so feel free to be healthier and go with avocado)  /  ~ 1 tsp sesame oil (not hoisin sauce, like I accidentally have in the photo, oops)  /  cucumber (optional)  /  coarse salt

Start off by scrubbing some coarse salt all over the chicken.  Use quite a bit of salt too because you’ll be poaching the chicken and then using the stock to flavour the rice so you don’t want it to be bland.  Slice up one of the pieces of ginger and just casually chop one bunch of the green onion.  Stuff the cavity of the chicken with the ginger and green onion, toss the chicken into a pot and fill with water until the chicken is fully submerged.  Set of low-medium heat and let it slowly simmer away until the chicken is cooked all the way through (I just checked by using a meat thermometer).  Don’t let it really come to a boil though, it should be a slow process so the meat doesn’t get tough.

In the meantime, using a fine grater, grate the other piece of ginger.  In a small saucepan, warm up the ginger with a generous amount of canola or avocado oil.  Finely dice up the green parts of the other bunch of green onion and after you’ve removed the saucepan from the heat, just add that in.  Season with some salt and the sauce is done.

I cooked 2 chickens last night! Greedy.

As soon as the chicken’s cooked through, you have to cool it down.  Ideally you throw it into an ice bath but we didn’t have any ice so we just ran it under cold water in the sink until it was cold.  Make sure you don’t throw out the water that you were poaching the chicken in though, because you’ll be using that to cook the rice!

Mince up the garlic cloves and toss into a pot with a bit of oil and give it a stir over medium heat.  Then wash your rice and toss it in, giving that a bit of a stir too.  If you have a rice cooker (which I forgot to bring over to our friends’) then transfer the rice to that.  Otherwise, just cook it on the stovetop.  Strain the poaching liquid and add in 3 and 1/2 cups of the liquid to the rice.  In a rice cooker, you know what to do next.  On the stovetop, cover with a lid and turn the heat to low and cook ’til it’s done.  (Like any respectable Asian, I never cook rice on the stove so this is a new technique for me).

While the rice is cooking, using preferably a Chinese cleaver, chop up the chicken, bone, skin and all.  You can slice up some cucumber too go along with it if you’re feeling like you need a bit of green in your meal.  And when the rice is done, you’re all finished!  Rock says the sauce was amazing and now it’s one of his favourites.  Everything tasted remarkably close to exactly how I wanted it to taste so I’m very happy with it. If you’ve never had hainanese chicken rice, you have got to give this recipe a try.