Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Grilled Chicken with Sticky Rice Stuffing


This is a homey dish that would impress the heck outta your spouse/bf/gf/in laws/colleagues/spouse's colleagues/frenemies/enemies...well, just about everyone, and it's completely doable!

Thanks to Noobcook for posting the easy-to-follow recipe.
I had been dreaming chicken & sticky rice days and nights after I saw her beautiful bird, and finally, I did it, with a little tweaks here and there.

Do some stretching exercises, take a deep breath...

Ready?
The bird
You'll need:
- 1 small sized chicken (you can go bigger, but my oven can only fit smaller birds, around HK$30 ones)
Remove head, neck, feet, trim excess fat, clean thoroughly and pat dry.

Marinate
- Hoisin sauce, dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, white pepper, five spice powder
- 4 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 2 shallots, thinly sliced
- a few sprigs of spring onion, cut into 5 cm long pieces
- 5 cm ginger, sliced thinly
Rub marinate mix all over the bird, place garlic, shallot, spring onion and ginger including in the cavity and in between the meat and skin, refrigerate overnight.

Sing the bird a lullaby if you wish :)

Sticky Rice Stuffing

I soaked 2 cups of sticky rice, 1 cup of dried shiitake mushrooms overnight. Before cooking, drain rice and set aside. Drain and slice mushrooms, reserve the water.


For a little citrus touch, instead of lemon/lime (which I didn't have), I used 9 years old dried orange peel from sc's mom. Soak them in water while preparing other ingredients.


My stuffing also included chestnuts, chopped dried shiitake mushrooms, and the best bit? Chinese sausages (lap cheong), sliced thinly. I like to think that lap cheong is the sweeter, Chinese cousin of bacon.


Heat up a pan, throw lap cheong pieces to release its oil, add mushrooms and chestnuts. Add light soy sauce and dark soy sauce, toss everything around a little...then add sticky rice.


...and add a cup of chicken stock, and 1/3 cup of mushroom water (the one from soaking the mushroom)

Bring to boil, reduce heat to simmer, cover and cook for 20 minutes....

...and it would be really hard to say goodbye to this sticky deliciousness...really really hard, but try.

Stop eating the stuffing!
It has to go into the bird's ass.

Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Stuff sticky rice into the bird's cavity (I wanted to say ass), and add a bit of thinly sliced rehydrated dried orange peel in the cavity and in between the chicken's meat and skin too.


I gave my bird too much liposuction, I couldn't close it's ass! Arrgghhh! Please remember to leave some skin to allow your bird to seal the rice properly. Place chicken on a roasting pan, covered with foil, let it roast for 1 hour.


After an hour, uncover the bird, oh my!
But I want my bird's skin to be crispier, darker, tastier.
So I basted the skin with a mix of olive oil, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, dark soy sauce and some sugar.
Baste it good!
Roast it again uncovered until the skin turns deep-brown-beautiful.

You likey? You wanna go deeper?
If you really want it, and because it's the holidays, when I can be guilty and forget the health factor just a little bit...
Baste the bird again and roast it again until you get this...

A little burnt bits here and there...that's all I wanted.
Now my bird is all kinds of beautiful!

Sweet, sticky, savoury tasty skin.
Tender, moist, juicy meat.
Delicious stuffing bursting with flavors.
There was no way I could stop at one bowl. No-bloody-way!

But it's totally worth the leg numbing dance class I had to do after :p

Happy winter solstice festival everyone~
Get cooking.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

hahaha.. I'm still laughing at the "Stop eating the stuffing! It has to go into the bird's ass." :)

Wow.. I must say it looks incredible. Well done, Rita!

Ravenous Couple said...

that's the best thing to ever come out of chicken ass...gorgeous!

Wandering Chopsticks said...

Gorgeous and yummy! My mom does this with Cornish game hens and debones them so you can just slice through and get a nice cross-section of sticky rice and chicken.

noobcook said...

I seem to keep seeing the word "ass" everywhere lol

glad you like the recipe! Wow i love your finishing... I'm stealing your idea of basting with hoisin sauce and all the other good stuff next time. And I like the touch of lap cheong in the rice too :)

EatTravelEat said...

Like you weren't going to use the word "cavity" instead of "ass" LOL. I want to make this now! The color of that chicken looks like a carefully prepared dish of soy sauce chicken. So brown and flavorful.

Wonder how 9 years old dried orange peel would taste! So much history.

Indonesia Eats said...

Ritongggg....

I'm totally begging, please let me go to your place and have the bird ready for me. :))

Mrs Ergül said...

Wow it looks so good! Totally a reverse lo mai gai!

Pei-Lin said...

My goodness! This post is damn good & damn hilarious, gal!! The word "ass" keeps popping up! ... or so I think ...

Love this idea of stuffing the bird with 糯米雞 ... Will consider trying it out ...

Happy Winter Solstice to you!

Pei-Lin

pigpigscorner said...

The bird looks gorgeous! Love the colour! I saw this at noobcook's too, I have to try this real soon! Great idea adding orange peel.

Su-Lin said...

This looks fabulous! Haha - chicken ass has never looked tastier!

Jackie said...

OM-NOM-NOM-NOM-NOM! My momma makes this from time to time, too, but she doesn't make her own sticky rice, she buys it from the Oriental Supermarket and then just shoves it up there before she roasts her chicken! It's a thing of beauty watching her ram a triangular rice "ball" up a bird's butt.

Yours looks uber yummalicious, though =)

Jax x

Little Corner of Mine said...

I so love the color of your chicken and not only it looks gorgeous, it looks super yummy too especially with the sticky rice. Oh girl, I wish you can share some with me.

KennyT said...

Hi Rita, Merry Christmas to you and the Sous Chef!

Tricia said...

One word ... "Yummilicious". Can't wait to make this!

zenchef said...

I made this! i did! i did! Tweaked it a little but overall it's very similar. It was delicious! Amazing! Delicious!
And i blogged about. Yes! Look at my blog! Yes!
I hope i made you proud.

Charles said...

Made this after seeing it on Zencancook's site. Absolutely wonderful. Thanks for the stuffing recipe. Love the name of your site...so much fun to say out loud.

Sophie ala Mode said...

Wow..that chicken looks amazingly delicious...

Anonymous said...

I've tried roasted baby chicken with ricotta cheese stuffing before, but non with glutinous rice,
since i love the glutinous very mush, i'm gonna made this for sure!