Chicken Adventure from Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines

How did this



become this



and finally ended up as this?



I went to the market to pick up some organic bison sausages but oh well, I came home with a 5-pound chicken instead. I guess instead of a bison sausage sandwich with caramelized onions and sautéed peppers like what I originally thought we'll have for dinner that night, my brain registered an image of a mouth watering Hainanese chicken.



Hainanese chicken is one of my most favourite Chinese chicken dishes in the whole wide world. I always ordered it in Chinese restaurants in Manila. The last time I had it was at Prima Taste on Robson Street in Vancouver and it was over a year ago. I remembered having unbearable cravings for it after that meal. I tried making it from a recipe from my cookbook called "Authentic Recipes from Singapore" but the recipe was too complicated for me I just read halfway through it and closed the book shut. I was really intimidated; I didn't even bother finishing it. If you've never had Hainanese chicken before, you have to try it. It's just poached chicken really but it is quite fascinating because the flavours are very subtle, it's barely there but it's definitely there sort of like a whiff of a very expensive perfume. The flavours are not invasive, abrasive or shockingly in your face but it's not flat that its plain boring. I prefer to call it elegant and refined. To be honest, it is kind of addictive.

So I went and picked up the book again from the forgotten section of my cookbook collection. I actually finished reading it but decided there's got to be a better and simpler way of doing things. Thank god for the internet and YouTube. I'm getting really lazy here so why don't you just check out Food Safari’s recipe and how to video right here or visit the Steamy Kitchen, one of my favourite Asian food blogs for a more stimulating read.



I wanted to follow the recipe so badly but Mr. Cat is a little bit freaked out about not having the actual heat turned on all the time so just to make sure he doesn't have a heart attack what I ended up doing is bring the broth to a real rolling boil then lower the heat to a slow simmer and keep repeating this every 10 to 15 minutes. I never turned the heat off. I even served it hot and not at room temperature like the way I always had them in restaurants and I don't know if that is an absolute no no but my chicken turned out to be really tender and juicy and the taste is just exactly as I remembered. And yes, I made the rice (it's a must have!!!) as well as the chili and ginger sauce too.

As you can imagine, 5 pounds of anything no matter how delicious can be a bit much so just to give us a little bit of variety, I decided to turn some of that tender and juicy chicken meat and the precious chicken broth into another one of our favourite street food; Pho Ga or Vietnamese Noodle Soup. If you want to make it from scratch, I suggest you go check out Wondering Chopstick and see how the real Vietnamese make their pho.



My broth already has most of the basic ingredients to make the pho ga so I just added some cloves, star anise, fish sauce and a piece of cinnamon stick and simmered the broth for 30 minutes before I fished them out and added my chicken pieces. It tasted really authentic (I've never been to Vietnam so what I'm really saying is it tasted just like most restaurants' pho) in fact, I think mine was even better because it didn't have MSG. See how gorgeous that is? I filled it up with scalding hot broth right after I took the two shots and slurped to my heart's content.



With my 5 pound chicken, I managed to have a bite of Singapore and a taste of Vietnam so I thought it's only right to finish my culinary adventure right back home. I've noticed I'd been making a lot of other Southeast Asian food but I very rarely make Filipino food. Sometimes I even feel embarrassed to call this a Filipino's food blog because there's hardly any Filipino recipes in here. So to even out the score, I thought I'd pay a little homage to one of my most favourite Filipino noodle dishes, chicken sotanghon guisado. While mine is a lazy version because of my ready made broth and the already cooked chicken plus I didn't have annatto seed oil, Connie Veneracion of Home Cooking Rocks' recipe is authentic so I thought if I'm going to post a recipe of it, it might as well be the real deal. Check out Connie's chicken sotanghon guisado.