A friend gave me a whole dressed chicken courtesy of her client who works for a poultry company in Perth. I decided to make Hainanese Chicken Rice with it following the recipe from Adam Liaw’s cookbook, Two Asian Kitchens.
Cooking the chicken was rather easy (although I think it could have used five more minutes during the poaching stage), and doing the three sauces were therapeutic–a lot of pounding using the mortar and pestle. It was delicious, and the meat was very tender and juicy. I loved the chilli and ginger sauces! While I followed the instructions in cooking the chicken and the sauces religiously, I used Won Hup Hainanese Chicken Rice sauce from a jar (a present from Singapore) to make the rice. The broth wasn’t very nice in my opinion, I found it quite greasy and bland.
Overall, I’d make it again. On a side note, I had my kitchen knives professionally sharpened over the week and I’m loving them–I wonder why I waited so long! My knife skills have a lot of room for improvement, but having a sharp knife gives that fluidity which hopefully will improve my food prep speed.
