Ricepot Chicken Rice

Initially I wanted to call this post My Fake Claypot Chicken Rice because I cooked the rice in the rice cooker and then served it in a claypot.  I have seen a few similar recipes but I assure you that I have been pulling this stunt from way back. I actually got the idea from watching my mum cook dog food. Does this sound gross?

When I was in secondary school, my family lived in a government quarters in Batu Buruk, Kuala Terengganu. One fine day, a dog gave birth to a few puppies inside an abandoned guardhouse behind our home. It was a rainy weekend when my parents "kidnapped" two puppies. I still remember my mum wearing my brother's Ultraman helmet (hee..hee..hee...she was just protecting herself from the rain, but still..hee..hee..hee..) and carrying a puppy in her hands. 

My dad carried the other one, a brown coloured pup with a permanent frown that was named Brownie. The puppy my mum carried was white with black patches around her eyes. My dad had already christened her "Tapung" which means patches in Malay.

Tapung and Brownie were so cute and I was totally smitten with Tapung. As I type this, I feel like crying because suddenly I miss her so much. Sobs!!! My brother and I had to take the "sumpah" (swearing as in cross my heart and hope to die kind of thing) in front of my mum that we will clean up after the puppies and take responsibility for caring for them or else they will have to go. 

Love is blind and I willingly wiped and cleaned after the puppies did their thing on the floor. I also bathed them. My mum also loved the puppies very much and did most of the cleaning up.

Chinese sausages.

I loved Tapung so much that I used to carry her and let her sit on my lap. I would look at her paws and marvel at how soft the pads of her feet were. You see, Tapung and Brownie were kept indoors because their mother was still outside the house. She would bark looking for them and the two pups would respond by barking back. 

Marinated chicken and shiitake mushrooms.

Later on when the mother dog went away, my brother and I would take our puppies to the garden and play. And of course, to let them do their "business" outside. We continued to keep them in the house until we moved to our own home in Chendering. There, they lived outside and had plenty of space to move around. And they grew into fine doggies.

Add rice to the stir fried ingredients.

We never fed the dogs commercial dog food. My mum would feed them with leftover food but in our home "leftovers" is  a rare thing, us being big eaters with bottomless pits. At most, only bones were left. So my mum would often cook fresh food using pork bones, pig ears and spare parts from the pork seller in town to cook for the doggies.

Transfer to ricepot and add water.

I would observe my mum putting rice into a pot of water and boiling it with the bones/meat or leftovers taken from my grandma and she even adds soya sauce to the mixture. Seriously, sometimes the dog food smelled pretty good. And that's where I got my idea of cooking rice with meat in a pot!

My spring onions on standby beside the rice cooker.

Oh dear, I have deviated from the main topic of this post. This   chicken rice, I tell you is superb! It is full of flavors and best of all it is a simple and hassle free one dish meal. You've got your rice, chicken and mushrooms and all you need is to add a simple stir fried vegetable and you are good to go.

Ricepot Chicken Rice (aka Fake Claypot Chicken Rice)

Recipe soure : Phong Hong
Serves : 3 very big eaters or 5 small eaters (no prizes for guessing which group I am in)

Ingredients for chicken and marinade :

- 2 large chicken legs, cut into bite sizes

- 2 cloves of garlic, finely minced

- 4 tablespoons light soya sauce

- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce

- 2 tablespoons dark soya sauce

- 1 teaspoon sesame oil

- a dash of pepper

Note : This may seem to be a lot of marinade for two chicken legs but you need to flavour the rice too. So might as well whack the all the marinade in at one go.

For the rice :

- 3 cups rice (I use Basmathi rice)

- 3 1/4 cups water

- 2 Chinese sausage (lap cheong), outer casing removed and thinly sliced

- 6 shiitake mushrooms, soaked to soften, stem removed and each cut into two

- 4 cloves garlic, finely minced

- 1 big onion, diced
- 3 stalks spring onions, only the thick white part, sliced

- 1" ginger, thinly sliced

- oil for frying

- 1 small rice bowl of finely sliced spring onions (optional but highly recommended)

Method :

1. Mix chicken and marinade ingredients. Let marinate for 1 hour.

2. Slice the shiitake mushrooms into two and set aside

3. Wash and drain rice. Set aside.

4. Heat oil in wok and fry the Chinese sausages until it is slightly brown. Remove and set aside.

5. In the same oil, fry onions until translucent.

6. Add garlic and ginger and fry until fragrant and garlic is slightly brown.

7. Add chicken together with marinade and mushrooms and fry until chicken is half cooked.

8. Add rice and Chinese sausages and stir to mix evenly. 

9. Transfer everything into a rice cooker, add water and cook the rice as you would normally do.

10. When the rice is cooked, immediately add spring onions, a dash of pepper and fluff the rice to evenly distribute the spring onions and pepper. Cover the rice pot for about 1o minutes before serving.

This post is linked to the event, Little Thumbs Up organised by Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids and Doreen of My Little Favourite DIY and hosted by Alvin of Chef and Sommelier