Recipes by Billy Tang
Illustration by Shilfina Putri
Basically these recipes will turning A whole chicken into three different dishes. Schmaltz and Gribenes, into Chicken Pho, into Hainese Chicken Rice.
Schmaltz and Gribenes
- Remove the skin from the chickens
- Then you can google schmaltz/gribenes recipe.
- Its basically cooking down skin until oil becomes separate and skin crispy.
- Add shallots to fry with the skin for extra fragrance.
- Make sure the oil doesn’t discolour and is yellow colour.
- When the skin is crispy it is readyStrain the oil so you have crunchy parts that are separate.
Day 1 : Chicken Pho
- One or two chickens
- 2 yellow onions
- 4inch ginger
- 2 tablespoons coriander seeds
- 4 whole cloves
- 2 tablespoons of pepper corns
- small bunch of cilantro stems
- 2 inch chunk of rock sugar, or sugar to taste
- if you have, bunch of sandworms or dried scallops or shrimp (for a nice base flavour)
- spring onions, a bunch
- fish sauce
- salt
Methods:
- To speed up cooking I normally butcher the chicken in pieces rather than cooking whole. Remove all wings as first step, can roast them for another meal and put in sandwiches. Cut the carcass in half, if you have two chickens you have four large pieces. Remove any excess fat (can cook with the skin for above schmaltz). Wash chicken parts with with salt, then rinse throughly with water.
- Take the onions (skin on), ginger, and aromatics, sandworms or dried seafood, put in oven to roast for 40-60mins. Basically want the onion really brown, and everything a little smoky. Not sure the oven temperature and timing but maybe 180c and keep an eye on things?
- Peal the burnt skin from onions and put into the stock pot with onions. Put aromatics into a stock metal thing to stop it floating around and add to pot. Throw in the sandworms or dried seafood. Then add the chicken pieces and fill up the pot to top with water. Bring to boil, then turn down heat into a strong simmer so the water is rolling but not violently.
- After 20mins or so, take out the chicken. Cool by maybe running it over a tap of cold water or ice bath. When ok to touch, basically remove flesh from bones. Can try and do it neatly by using knife as you will be using this for Hainan Chicken. Can separate dark meat from white meat at this point. I like using dark meat for pho topping and shredding it. Other parts can put in fridge for next day Hainan Chicken. The dark meat can season with salt, pepper, touch of light soy, sesame oil, leave to one side or refrigerate so its perky. As you remove flesh, throw the separated bones back into the still boiling stock pot. With the stock, keep an eye on the fat, and skim if necessary as you want a clear brothThe fat oil can add into the boiling schmaltz to boost it. Then boil for a minimum of 2 hours, but its nicer longer for maybe 3 hours.
- About an hour before finish, can add the rock sugar and take out aromatics. Would at this point tie up the spring onion bunches and add that to the stockCan tentatively begin seasoning with mixture of fish sauce and salt. Its basically a combination of sweet and umami saltiness from fish sauce with the chicken as the base. The rock sugar and fish sauce helps the chicken broth gain more flavor so you have to taste and balance, if you mess it up can adjust by also adding more water to stock – although its good to allow the stock to reduce to a leave like 25% down from the level you start with.
- When the soup is almost ready, can prepare the PHO noodles. Thin ones are nice, or can buy fresh thick cut ones. For dried ones can soak in cold water an hour before, then when almost ready have boiling water ready and add, it should cook very quickly. You basically want to time it so the noodles are fresh, hot, and ready to put directly in the bowl.
- To build the bowl its like this: Finely cut green part of spring onion, white part can put in container of water so it grows back. Put cooked noodles into the bowl. Add a table spoon of schmaltz (aka chicken fat)Add the dark meat or white if you want chicken meat on top of noodle. Add a pile of spring onions. Then ladle on top of chicken and warm pho noodles. You want to add enough soup that goes slightly above the top of pho noodles
- As additional toppings can add beansprouts, squeeze some lime, chilis, hoisin sauce, etc, etc
- Each person can also flavour with extra fish sauce.
Day 2 : Hainese Chicken Rice.
- Rice
- Spring Onion
- Ginger
- Light Soy Sauce
- Sugar
Methods:
- Hopefully you have leftover pho stock.
- For the rice, you basically add enough schmaltz into a frying pan and you want to fry the rice grains first. Make sure to flip or stir so that the grains are evenly coated in the fat. Can season a bit. You will hear some crackling. Once fragrant and infused, take off heat and add to rice cooker.
- Then add pho stock to the rice cooker, cook the rice in the stock.
- When rice is ready and on standby. Add how many chicken pieces you want and warm it in the rice cooker by placing it on the rice. You need to get timing right and you don’t want to overcook the chicken, just warm it up.
- For the sauce, use schmaltz and mix it with finely cut scallions and minced ginger togetherSeason with salt or a touch of fish sauce.
- There are three sauces. The second sauce is a sweet soy sauce.
- The quick way is to dark two table spoons light soy, one table spoon dark soy, and add to taste sugar (prob 1 or 2 tablespoons) and mix.
- The third sauce is chilli sauce.
- Then you take rice out, add the chicken on top, then add dollops of the three sauces.
- Ideally as side, you can cut cucumber into coins and add.Can garnish with sprigs of coriander and also the Gribenes (the crispy chicken skin)
- That’s basically at least two different meals from the chicken. A third if you count roasting the chicken wings, shredding and making into sandwiches. And the Gribenes you can also add to salad, like lettuce with wakame and tomato, then a dressing using miso, mirin, soy sauce, and red wine vinegar.
These were my COVID cooking experiences!