Lentor's Kitchen – Claypot Rice

Claypot rice is one of Yang’s favourite dishes and we had one recently for dinner at his parents’ place (fondly called Lentor home). Traditionally, a claypot is used to cook this dish but Yang’s mom invented her own style to do away with the rice sticking to the bottom of the claypot. She cooked the rice in a rice cooker instead. Ya, you can’t get the fragrant ‘chao ta’ rice this way but hey, the recipe suits me just fine as we don’t have a claypot at home. :P

After asking for the recipe from mom, I tried it this evening and it turned out well. So here’s sharing the recipe with those who are interested to try this out at home.

Ingredients:

2 skinless chicken thigh meat – debone and cut into small pieces

4 dried big shiitake mushrooms – soak in hot water to soften, rinse afterwards & slice thinly

Salted fish – about 4 cm x 3 cm x 1 cm, deep fried and break into tiny crumbs

Chinese sausage – 1 stick, remove outer skin, slice thinly.

2 shallots – sliced

1.5 cup jasmine white rice – rinsed

cooking oil – 1 tbsp

sesame oil – 1 tsp

oyster sauce – 4 tbsp

white ground pepper

Dark soy sauce

Water – 1.5 cup

Method:

1)  Marinate the chicken meat pieces and sliced mushrooms with dashes of pepper and oyster sauce. Leave it in the refrigerator for about 1 hour.

2)  With medium heat, stir-fry the sliced Chinese sausages in cooking oil until slightly browned. Set the cooked sausages aside.

3)  Using the now sausage-flavoured oil left in the pan, saute the sliced shallots until lightly browned and then add rice. Stir the rice grains until opaque.

4)  Transfer the partially cooked rice into the rice cooker. Add 1.5 cup of water and top it off with the marinated meat and mushrooms.

5)  Start the rice cooker on the ‘cook’ mode.

6)  Once the rice is cooked, add the salted fish crumbs and dark soy sauce (go over the rice in 2 quick rounds) and sesame oil (optional). Mix everything well (ensure that the soy sauce colour the rice evenly), close the lid to let the rice stand in the ‘warm’ mode for another 10 minutes.

7)  Add the Chinese sausage to the rice and give it a final stir. Serve warm. :)

Serves 2-3 persons.

One thing to note is that frying the salted fish might stink up the whole house if yours is an apartment. The pungent smell of the salted fish attracts houseflies too. Yang’s mom fried the salted fish in her open-air kitchen for us to bring home to do this dish – a big convenience for us indeed.