Archives for July 2010

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Hainanese chicken rice was one of those things that I had always wished to try cooking, but never got around to it. It seemed all to troublesome. Some time last month however, I decided that trouble or no trouble, I was going to make myself some homestyled Hainanese chicken rice.

I searched around for an authentic looking chicken rice recipe, and settled on the one by Amy Beh. It can be found here. I used a smallish kampung chicken as the meat is usually leaner and more tender. If you ask me, preparing the condiments was a little more troublesome than preparing the chicken and the rice. The chicken turned out very tender and tasty, despite the fact that I cooked it slightly longer because I didn’t want it to be bloody inside. I was too lazy to roll the rice into balls but it tasted good anyway. The recipe is definitely a keeper. The chilli sauce recipe was rather good and packed quite a spicy punch. The minced ginger condiment was a little too spicy for my liking and so I added a little chicken soup to dilute it. I discovered though, that the hubby did not care much for chicken rice condiments. I can probably save some time the next round.

Crab Meat Linguine

I absolutely adore the crabmeat squid ink pasta from Valentinos. The richness of the sauce, coupled by the sweetness of the crabmeat – simply heavenly. There are days where I actually crave for that pasta. And there was the day that I craved for it, only to find out that Valentinos was closed. Not for the day, but for the month. The only solution to ease the craving was well, to attempt to create my own crab meat linguine.

I must add here that I’ve attempted this dish before but was not satisfied with the taste. The sauce was a tad bit too watery and lacked the taste of fragrant tomatoes. This time, I made several changes and ended up with something that I was rather proud of. Of course, since there was no squid ink linguine on hand, one had to be contented with regular store bought linguine. My recipe eludes me at this point of time but I promise to come back and post it, should it slip back into my memory.