Chicken Rice Chronicles — The Start
In fits and starts, I’ve been trying to write my first post. First I over-complicated it, then I let it slide for a long time because well work and all. Let’s just say that this post has been almost a year in coming and it’s not going to be spectacular unfortunately. I’m just gonna wing it cause I need to just post it.
The idea for me doing this is to use my pursuit of good food around the world to discuss the process and gear that get me there. This can mean anything from the latest gadget to what I’m doing about care for my corgi Mindy. It’s like Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern but with tech and a corgi involved too.
So let’s start with the basics — chicken rice. Chicken rice is by far my most favorite dish of all time. Ever since I was a kid Thai chicken rice was my “desert island” dish; the one dish I would choose to eat for the rest of my life if given the choice.
The Thai version of chicken rice is based off the Singaporean dish Hainan chicken rice. There are several versions of this dish but the Thai version is surprisingly uniform across the country and the world. It starts with super moist boiled chicken — lower temp boiling barely cooks the chicken and prevents drying out. You can insert whatever secret blend of soup stock and spices to impart flavor at this stage but most of the time it’s just chicken and/or pork stock. Optionally its served with congealed blood and/or a little bit of liver.
Next the rice. The rice should be fragrant with garlic and ginger but not overly so. It should also be a little oily from cooking in fatty stock with a little added oil.
The sauce is where the Thai version goes its own direction. Fermented soy beans are the underlying ingredient, along with soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, garlic, ginger, and bird chilis. The proportions, of course matter and is where most of the major variation and differentiation among different shops comes in. Some omit certain ingredients all together or add other ones but usually the chilis stay — it is, after all a Thai dish.
Garnish with cilantro (extra on mine), cucumber slices (extra of that too please), as well as a bowl of light chicken stock and boiled down daikon and you’ve got your meal.
It’s the simplicity of the base flavors combined with the sauce that makes this meal the best for me.
I started to realize not to long ago that this combination — chicken and rice — is found in nearly every major food culture: Biryani or such style dishes in Central Asia, lemon roasted chicken with rice and plantains in Cuba, Tandoori style chicken with saffron rice in middle eastern countries, cold Hainan chicken rice in southern China, Singapore has the original chicken rice, Taiwan has fried chicken rice with sweet pickled vegetables, and so on. There’s also chicken teriyaki and rice is Japan which is also a favorite of mine. It’s almost a universal dish — well wherever there’s rice and chicken.
New variations are also being invented as the world gets smaller and cultures intermingle. In Thailand, for example, one variation replaces the boiled chicken with fried chicken (most likely after KFC opened up there decades ago) in a variation called fried chicken rice. This variant is served with sweet chili sauce usually. I mean, c’mon — what dish can’t be made better with deep frying. Am I right?
Thailand also has what I define as a looser and more indigenous version of chicken rice based on roasted or barbecued chicken. This is usually eaten with sticky rice balled by hand and som tum or green papaya salad. Simple and amazing — a perfect harmony of savory, sweet, sour, umami, carb, meatiness, crunchiness, and softer textures.
Thai food is basically about this — finding the precarious meeting place of so many different flavor and texture elements that it’s confusing and harmonious at once. Thais do this across dishes in a meal too — pairing different dishes to make a meal that brings in many different flavor and texture profiles in a delicate yet profound balance when done well. Thais are basically born foodies — it’s not really even a thing in Thailand, it’s simply “eating.”
So there you have it — my unofficial linking of cultures via what is arguably one of the most basic yet delicious food pairings ever devised. Stay tuned for very irregular (hopefully not) and very diverse diatribes on whatever strikes my fancy.
