I really hope you are all doing ok. Justine and myself are both on half-term break and it's a relief. I do have a lot on though but good things; Justine's cousins are coming over tomorrow to play with her. Then Tuesday, Justine is off to the trampoline park with a friend and will have a sleepover at her house afterwards. Wednesday my best friend is coming over with her two children and will stay with us for one night. Thursday my colleagues are coming to mine for dinner and I am starting on the cooking on Tuesday. Mauritian food tastes better if it sits in the fridge for a couple of days anyway. Friday will be mostly a chill day for us but I will have to tidy up and clean a little bit I guess. Although that could wait for the weekend because Justine will be at her dad's.
That's my schedule for the week; pretty full on as you can see:)
Anyway, in my last post, I promised to put a picture of Justine's wand up in this post and here it is...
Justine now has a Harry Potter wand from the Harry Potter Studio Tour shop but I do like the one dad made for her, it's rugged and magical!;)
Now it's time for a little recipe for another kind of magical spell - a delicious rice dish!
What would be my blog without talking about food?! I absolutely love food, sweet and savoury but I have a particularly sweet tooth:)) This recipe is inspired from Hainan's chicken rice but without the Pandanus leaves which can be hard to find in some regions of the world.
You will need:
- ginger (two 2cm pieces)
- garlic (2 cloves)
- shallot (quarter, cut into small pieces)
- lime (half)
- sea salt
- rice (or white) vinegar
- chicken breast left whole (one)
- soy sauce
- spring onions
- vegetable oil (preferably not olive)
- mortar and pestle
- rice (washed and soaked in tap water for 10 minutes)
Using the mortar and pestle, make a paste of a 2cm piece of ginger, 2 garlic cloves, a good pinch of sea salt, and a good squeeze of lime juice. Add the shallot pieces and further bash to make a paste. Drain the rice. Cut slits all over the chicken breast and insert slices of ginger and spring onion in these slits. Put the chicken in a saucepan of cold water (just cover the chicken) and add a good pinch of salt to the water. Bring to the boil then reduce heat to allow for a gentle simmer. Let the chicken simmer for 15 minutes. In the meantime, pour a swig of vegetable oil into a sauté pan and heat on medium heat. Fry the garlic, ginger, shallot and salt mixture for around 5 minutes (do not let it brown too much). Spoon out the mixture and put into a bowl. Immediately pour a tablespoon of rice or white vinegar on the hot mixture.
Fry the drained rice in the same oil used for the mixture ; fry for 2 minutes then use the chicken stock (chicken cooking water) to cook the rice - pour enough stock over the rice to just cover it and bring to a boil then cover and reduce heat to lowest setting. Cook for approximately 10 minutes. Taste to see doneness.
Slice spring onions finely to sprinkle over finished dish. Slice chicken and reserve the rest of the broth to moisten rice when served. Serve rice, mix some soy sauce in the broth and pour some of this over the rice. Mix some of the ginger/garlic/shallot mixture into the rice. Place a few chicken slices on the rice and sprinkle some spring onion on top.
If you happen to have some salad cress lying about, it can be used as an accompaniment to this dish. It adds freshness and a further bit of green. Just squeeze some lime juice over the cress before serving.
Enjoy!
Let me know if you tried it, if you liked it and if you made any changes, let me know what worked for you:)
I guess I will pen off for now, Justine is back from her sleepover, I will go spend some time with her!
Bye!!!
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