文昌鷄飯 WenChang Ji Fan - Chicken Rice from WenChang, HaiNan

What are the Hainaese famous for? Their chicken rice! The dish which I am going to make is called WenChang Ji fan 文昌鷄飯. In the old days, Chinese people would eat chicken only on feast days and people in Hainan would eat WenChang Ji Fan and the rice would had been rolled into rice balls, which we would call as fantuan 飯糰. 

So for those people out there, fantuan is not only eaten in Japan, but people in Hainan have been eaten fantuan for millennia. 

On Sunday is our high feast day. Fr Alan said that in England, August 15 would had been our High Summer Feast day and people would had partied on the streets, but this was terminated after the Reformation by the puritans. 

However, this high summer feast day has been transferred to Sunday 14 August 2016, by the Church in England, because our bishops have very low expectations of the faithful and they have assumed the faithful would not go to church to celebrate this high feast day on Monday after going to Mass on Sunday.

So on this high feast day, it will be most appropriate to make this WenChang Ji Fan for lunch. 

WenChang Ji fan 文昌鷄飯

On that morning, Daniel the seminarian, will be coming for a cooking lesson to learn to make Guo'tie 鍋貼.

Guo'tie 鍋貼

At lunch time, Ola will be coming to eat and she will be bringing her daddy too.  Michelle and Tabi will be coming for tea at 4 pm. So there will be lots of feasting on this summer high feast day. 

Some notes: WenChang Ji Fan - WenChang is a city in HaiNan Island in China; Ji means chicken and Fan means rice - so it could be translated as WenChang chicken rice. In places like Singapore and Malaysia, it is called as HaiNan Ji Fan or HaiNan chicken rice. 

WenChang Ji 文昌鷄

However, I am not able to go to WenChang City to buy a fresh chicken and I will not be making the rice balls either.

Instead, I have purchased an Oakham chicken from Marks and Spencers and I am going to use Sella rice. People outside China would normally use Thai fragrant rice to make this WenChang Ji Fan, but I like sella rice because nutritionally it is as good as eating brown rice. Furthermore, sella rice absorbs more liquid stock than other types of rice, twice as much as Thai fragrant rice and this means the rice is tastier after absorbing so much stock. 

In my humble opinion, I reckon Marks and Spencers' Oakham chicken is the best chicken one can buy in the UK. It has lots of meat, full of flavour and if one were to cook the chicken properly, the meat can be juicy and succulent. Oakham chickens have not been injected with antibiotics or growth hormone. I know Marks and Spencers will make sure their chickens are reared in the best of conditions and fed with the best natural food. In addition, Oakham chicken is a slow growing chicken and it lives 50 percent longer than chicken one buys from Waitrose. 

In my other post, I have already explained that I would not buy huge chickens which Marks sells, and the maximum size I would buy is 1.5 kg. And so I have bought a 1.5 kg Oakham chicken. 

Another good thing about Oakham chicken is that is comes pre-washed and ready to cook. Therefore I have to do very little to the chicken.

I first measure out 3 cups [rice cups] of sella rice which has a volume of 500 ml or a weight of 450 grams or 16 ozs. I soak the rice for 24 hours in salted cold water and refrigerate the soaked rice overnight. 

In a very large cooking pot, I will bring 3 litres of water to boil, and add slices of ginger, an onion, a few black whole peppercorns. When the water is boiling, I will slowly lower the chicken into the water. I will boil the chicken rapidly for 10 - 12 minutes and turn off the heat at the end of the cooking time, cover the pot with a lid and drape a blanket of towel over the pot to keep in the heat. I will let the chicken sit in the hot boiling liquid for 60 minutes. At the end of the hour, I will remove the chicken and place it on a large plate. I will rub Himalayan salt on the chicken and also with sesame oil.  This chicken is also called BaiQieJi 白切鷄 and Teochew people call this chicken bêh zam goi 白斬鷄.

Note: 12 minutes boiling time for a well done chicken and 10 minutes for a perfect chicken which have bones which are still red. 

The rice is the piece de resistance of WenChang Ji Fan, and like paella, the rice is the most important aspect of this dish. Therefore it is important that the rice is separated, cooked [not soggy nor undercooked] and fragrant. In SouthEast Asia, people could add pandan leaves into the rice. However, the original dish does not have pandan leaves when made in WenChang, HaiNan, China. 

After soaking the rice for 24 hours, I will rinse it with very cold water and drain the rice for 20 minutes using a colander, and one has to be very careful not to break the rice grains in the washing process. 

To prepare the stock, I would debone the cooked chicken after it has cooled for 45 minutes and return the bones to the stock. I would then simmer the bones in the stock for an hour. 

To prepare the stock for cooking the rice, I would prepare just under 1 litre of chicken stock - adding a Kallo organic chicken stock cube, 1 tsp Himalayan salt to the stock and bring this to a simmer.

I will then sauté minced ginger, garlic with 2 tbsp of shallots flavoured oil and then sauté the rice grains and make sure the grains are coated with oil, garlic and ginger. I will then place this rice into a rice cooker pot and add the prepared boiling stock and let the rice cooker do the rest of the cooking. As soon as the rice cooker finishes cooking the rice, I would fluff up the rice, switch off the rice cooker and the rice can sit in the rice cooker for up to half an hour or until the guests arrive.

Note: If you were to use Thai fragrant rice, and you were to wash the rice, then you should use the same volume of stock to the rice. You would also need to soak the rice grains for 20 minutes, then drain the rice and let it stand in a colander for 20 minutes. So if you were to use 500 grams of Thai fragrant rice, you would use 500 ml of prepared stock. 

I will serve the rice with sliced cucumbers and tomatoes on the side and place some chicken pieces on the side of the plate. WenChang Ji Fan is eaten with minced ginger sauce traditionally in WenChang but one could eat it with the Cantonese minced ginger and spring onion sauce, which is called JiangRong 薑蓉.  The people in SouthEast Asia eat this chicken rice dish with homemade chilli sauce, which is made from chillies, garlic, ginger and lime juice. 



However, as my guests are Europeans, and I have a hunch that the Cantonese jiang'rong would not be suitable for their taste, I have decided to modify the Teochew diam'zio 甜醬. I make Teochew diam'zio by mixing soya sauce and plum sauce and for this sauce, I add the juice of half a freshly squeezed lime. 



For dessert, I am going to serve marble kungen with chocolate sauce.



Daniel and I are going make guotie 鍋貼  and we will serve these to the guests as well. 



When Michelle and Tabi arrive for tea at 4 pm, they will be served orange chiffon cake.



One aspect of the WenChang Ji Fan which I have not discussed is the use of fried shallots to garnish the rice.   One aspect of cooking Indian pulao rice and biryani is the use of fried shallots to garnish these dishes. I think fried shallots would go very well with WenChang Ji Fan.  Daniel particularly likes scattering fried shallots on his rice. The question is would he scatter fried shallots on his paella?

Shopping Galore

I had chipped my 19 cm plate and apparently this breeds bacteria and I have to buy a new plate. So I went to Ealing Broadway to find for such a plate. I found it in the first shop, TK Maxx, and bought a Jamie Oliver side kick plate for £2.99. The normal price of this plate is about £8. 

I will use this plate to turn over Spanish tortilla from my 20 cm frying pan. 

While there in TK Maxx, I saw a Kugelhopf Bundt baking tin for £19.99 and bought the bundt baking tin and this is my fifth Nordic Ware baking tin. This particular baking tin sells for 50 USD in the US and £36.95 at Divertimenti. 

I will use this bundt tin to bake a marble kungen and serve this German cake with delicious chocolate sauce. This bundt baking tin is a 10 cup size and hence I will use a six egg marble kungen recipe. 

Why do I like Nordic Ware bundt tins so much? The quality is really excellent and babka or Kugelhopf tins made in Europe cannot match Nordic Ware's quality. Nordic Ware baking tins are relatively heavier and conducts heat very efficiently and I bake at 10 C lower compared with other baking tins and cakes bake in these tins bake for a shorter period and the cake bakes evenly, thereby saving electricity. 

Christina's birthday 鍋貼

It is Christina's birthday today and I am going to make some guotie 鍋貼 and bring to her place and share these with her. 

I am also going to sing a happy birthday song for her in Chinese [Mandarin] as well. 

祝妳生日快樂

祝妳生日快樂

祝妳生日快樂

祝妳幸福祝妳健康

祝妳前途光明。

祝妳生日快樂

祝妳生日快樂

祝妳幸福祝妳健康

祝妳溫暖家庭。

I have posted my old guotie recipe in November 2014 and since then I have improved my way of making guotie.  So what are the changes. 

The filling, which we call xian'r 餡兒 or just xian 餡, has been improved. I use coriander leaves, spring onions and ginger, plus very lean pork mince and the seasonings remain the same.

As for the wrapper, which we call skin in Chinese or said as pi 皮, I roll this very thinly - and we say pi2 bao2 皮薄 [thin wrapper] bao1 dao4 bao3bao3 包到飽飽 [fill with lots of filling] - well if you do not get the tones right, nobody would understand you.

One guotie and homemade discs wrappers

Guotie galore

Cooking the guotie in my small frying pan and using a lid from my pyrex bowl

Guotie after cooking

Packing the guotie drizzled with balsamic glaze

Chicken Biryani

Karen and Julia Pinto, two ex-students of mine, are coming for lunch on Saturday 6 August 2016. Dr Marie will also join us for lunch. I am preparing chicken biryani for our lunch.

The Mughal Empire empire, which ruled India for years, brought Biryani to that nation. There are many types of biryanis and the old Mughal King used to eat many different types of biryani, at least one type per week and there must have been at least 52 different types of biryani.  

I bought a 1.3 kg young spring chicken from Waitrose and I had removed all the back bones, wings, parson's nose, skin and cut the chicken into 8 large pieces and the weight of the skinless chicken pieces [without the backbones, skin, parson's nose, wings etc] came to 1 kg, which should be enough to feed four people.

I then marinated these pieces of chicken with the following spices which were mixed with 150 gram of Onken natural set full fat yogurt.

25 grams peeled and minced ginger
25 grams peeled and minced garlic
half tsp ground cumin
half tsp ground turmeric
half tsp ground garam masala
2 bay leaves
1 tsp good quality sea salt [I used Maldon sea salt flakes]
1 little pot of Knorr chicken stock pots



Preparation of Onion and Whole Spices 
2 medium size onions peeled and diced
2 pieces cinnamon sticks
5 pcs green cardamoms
5 pcs whole cloves
2 star anise
2 whole mace
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
1 tbsp [30 ml] vegetable oil - I use rapeseed oil

Traditionally these spices would have been fried in ghee. However, I think vegetable oil is much more healthier than ghee.

Sauté the diced onions in vegetable oil and then add the whole spices and allow these to be sautéd until the onions have turned slightly brown and the spices fragrant.  Allow the spices and onions to cool and then add these to the marinated chicken and allow the chicken pieces to marinate overnight in a fridge. Do remember to cover the chicken pieces or else the fridge would smell. 

Soak 3 cups of sella rice [420 grams] in salted water for at least 24 hours. 

In addition soak a few pinches of saffron in two tablespoons of water for a few hours. Saffron is the most expensive spice and it is very good for people who do not want to get cancer. You can add as much or as little saffron as you like. I pay £12 for two grams of Iranian saffron, which I buy from an Iranian shop at West Ealing. 

Bring to boil 2 liters of water and then add the bones of the chicken into the water - boil for an hour until all the flavour from the bones is released into the stock.
Fish out the bones and set the stock aside - You will need this stock for parboiling the soaked rice.
It is better to make the stock a day before and allow the stock to chill in a fridge overnight. This allows one to remove any fat which will float to the top of the stock easily. 
Add two Kallo organic stock cubes and 1 tsp of Himalayan salt to this stock and allow the stock to boil gently to make sure the stock cubes have dissolved into the liquid stock. 

Prepare three rice bowls full of coriander leaves and chop the stems finely. 
Julienne 1 onion and saute this and set aside. 

Julienne 3 peeled large shallots and sauté the shallots in oil and set aside for garnish.
Sauté a couple of handfuls of cashew nuts until light brown, drain and set aside for garnish.
Sauté a handful of raisins and set them aside for garnish.
Squeeze the juice of one lemon and set this aside. 

Drain the sella rice and add the sella rice into the prepared boiling chicken stock.
Meanwhile, place a large pot with a heavy bottom containing the marinated chicken and mix in two bowls of coriander leaves and finely chopped coriander stems.  The marinated pieces of chicken should be arranged on the large pot with a heavy bottom in a single layer.  Scatter one rice bowl of coriander leaves and fried onion on top of the chicken pieces. 
Turn on the heat to medium high [number 6] and start cooking the chicken pieces and when the chicken pieces start bubbling, reduce the heat to medium [number 5].
Parboil the sella rice for 8 minutes. [If you were to use basmati rice, then boil the soaked and drained basmati rice for 6 minutes. You only need to soak basmati rice for about 20 minutes, unlike sella rice which should be soaked for a longer period.]
Drain the parboiled rice completely. 




Pile the parboiled rice on top of the chicken, coriander and onions like a little hill and make a hole using the handle of a wooden spoon on the rice to allow the steam from the chicken to escape.
Pour the soaked saffron water around the rice.
Cover with a lid and cook in low heat for 50 minutes - first 15 minutes at number 4 and then reducing to number 3 for the rest of the cooking time. 



Switch off the heat after the 50 minutes and allow the biryani to stand for 15 minutes before serving and do not open the lid of the pot. 

Spread some biryani cooked rice on a very large serving dish, and then place pieces of the cooked chicken on top of the rice and add more cooked rice on top of the meat. Remove any whole spices which one can see.
Then garnish the top of the biryani with the sautéd cashew nuts, sautéd shallots, sautéd raisins and some coriander leaves. 
Place hard boiled eggs, which have been halved on top of the biryani - allowing an egg per person.
Drizzle the juice of one lemon on top of the biryani.  

Chicken Biryani

Serve the biryani with raita. I have prepared a pomegranate and pineapple raita to accompany this biryani. Please see the picture below. 

Raita

Daniel, the seminarian from my community is coming for lunch on Sunday 7 August 2016. I have cooked the same dish again for Daniel.

The Chicken Biryani with Daniel on Sunday 7 August 2016

And for dessert, Daniel and I had Eaton Mess. 

Questions and Answers

What is sella rice? Sella rice is a Pakistani parboiled rice and it is usually yellow in colour, which is a sign that it has been aged for several years. I do not use Indian basmati rice because I find the grains break easily and basmati rice cannot take the amount of cooking I need for making good pilaf or pulao and especially biryani. Please read the link given for parboiled rice above and you can better understand why I use sella rice. 

Why do I use raw chicken and not pre-cook the chicken curry? I like my chicken pieces to be juicy and succulent. If one were to precook the chicken as a curry and then make biryani from this cooked chicken curry, then the chicken pieces become dry and loses much of its taste and texture.

8 minutes for parboiling the soaked sella rice - how do you count the 8 minutes? The duration of eight minutes is counted from the moment the stock and rice starts bubbling and one has to continue to boil the rice at high heat. My induction stove has a 10 dial setting - P [for power] or 10 to 0 which is off. I start boiling the stock at 10 or P and when the stock starts to come to the boil, I add the soaked drained rice into the boiling stock. I continue to boil the stock and rice at maximum heat until the stock starts to bubble. I turn the heat down to 8 and set the timer to 8 minutes. After boiling for 8 minutes, I drain the par-boiled completely and then place this half cooked rice on top of the chicken pieces which have been cooking for some 15 minutes in a pot with a heavy bottom and tight fitting lid. 

Why don't you add chillies with the spices you have used for marinating the chicken pieces? Many people are unable to eat chilli hot food. People can have stomach ulcer after eating chillies for a long time. Some people suffer from diarrhoea after eating chillies in their food. Some people, who have had cancer, cannot eat chillies. Children cannot eat chillies. These are some of the reasons why I do not add chillies into my biryani. However, people who like chilli hot food, can add chilli oil onto their biryani on the table before they eat. However, there is nothing stopping you from adding chillies into your biryani. 

There are many good ingredients in biryani - and these are turmeric and saffron which stops people from getting cancer. Pomegranate seeds also stops people from going senile. 

Everybody uses different combinations of spices in making their biryanis. I use these spices because I like their taste and fragrance. You can use whatever spices you wish and like and there is no set rule. However, you must use turmeric and saffron in your biryani. 

Size of chicken - Why do you use such small chicken(s)? If I were to have six people, I would need 560 grams of sella rice but two small chickens. I would not buy a 2 kg chicken. Why? Small chicken meat has a better texture - it is softer and is more succulent. The maximum size chicken I would buy would be a 1.5 kg. So, if I know I have people who are real carnivores, I would get two 1.5 kg chickens instead of two 1.3 kg chickens.  However, there will be too many pieces of chicken to place on my biggest pot and I therefore have to cook the chicken pieces in two pots - one with rice and one without rice. It is a good idea to place all of the 560 grams of sella rice into one pot.  

I do not have an induction hob and I only have a gas stove. Will this make a difference? Yes, it would. You would need a tava [an Indian cast iron flat pan] to distribute the heat from the gas evenly and to not allow for hotspots.  So, you need to place your pan, which has a thick heavy bottom, on the tava and then cook the chicken on medium high initially, turning it down to medium heat and then to low and then very low, in order not to burn the chicken pieces on the bottom of the pan. 

Some people add butter on top of the half cooked rice. Why don't you use butter? I do not use butter for health reasons. I want to reduce my saturated fat intake.

Olaf celebrated his 3rd birthday

Olaf, son of Renata, celebrated his 3rd birthday today [His actual birthday is 2nd August]. His mother asked me to make a mango mousse cake with a picture of police car on the cake. The cake is covered with fresh cream.

Salad

I think everybody knows Chinese people do not eat salad and Dr Marie has asked me to prepare a bowl of salad for her son's party today.  Here is the salad I prepared.



From left to right - pomegranate, cherry tomatoes quartered, 200 grams Duchy feta cheese - 0.5 cm cubed, sweet corn 160 grams, raisins - 2 handfuls, 5 large carrots, 5 stalks of celery and 3 eating apples and the middle are 4 sweet gem lettuce and coriander leaves which will be used for garnish.

For the dressing, I used extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, salt and sugar.

Everybody who ate the salad really liked. 

I did not add cucumber because Dr Marie's son is allergic to this vegetable. I did not onions or spring onions or white or black pepper because I suffer from acid reflux. There were people in the party who cannot eat hot food and I therefore did not add chillies.

The cost of the above ingredients was £8.  All ingredients were bought from Waitrose and we fed 30 guests. 

At the end of the party, at tea time, I made these lovely little chocolate cakes for the guests.

Sonya's Chocolate Cake

Dr Marie has a granddaughter living in Germany, whose name is Sonya. When Sonya was 16 years old, she asked me to make her a chocolate cake. I told her I would make one for her in two years time. So here is the chocolate cake I have made for her.

 

Swiss butter cream recipe

1/3 pint or 6.67 fl oz [189 ml] egg white
10 oz [280 grams] golden caster sugar 
1 lb [450 grams] unsalted butter

In a water bath heat up the egg white and sugar until the mixture reaches 88 C. You need to keep stirring to stop the egg white being cooked.

Then whisk the egg white and sugar at high speed, using a tabletop cake mixer like Kenwood Chef for 5 minutes until the temperature of the egg white approaches room temperature. By then, the egg white will be whisked until stiff peaks.

Then add the butter, a little at a time. Continue to whisk and make sure that the butter cream does not curdle.

For Swiss Chocolate Butter Cream, add the melted 7 oz of very dark high quality chocolate into the butter cream.

Imperial Weights and Measures

As we have got our independence back, we should also remember our Imperial weights and measures. 

Imperial Weights

1 lb [pound] = 16 oz [ounces]
14 lb = 1 st [stone]
1 hundredweight [cwt] = 8 sts = 112 lbs


2 stones = 1 quarter
4 quarters = 1 hundredweight

20 hundredweights = 1 ton [NOT tonne and 1 tonne = 1000 kg]

Of course the only weights we use in cooking and baking are pounds and ounces - but I thought I remind you about the others as well, in case you have forgotten about stone, quarter, hundredweight and ton.

Other useful weights to remember:

1 stick of butter = 0.5 cup = 4 oz = 113 grams
200 grams = 7 oz
1 lb = 453.592 grams

In the Far East and East Asia, they also use "catty"

1 catty 斤 = 16 taels 兩
1 catty = 20 ozs

However, in China one catty is rounded to 500 grams and in Taiwan, it is rounded to 600 grams.

In general, I normally weigh ingredients instead of using volume measures. However, for the fatless sponge cake, Misia uses cup sizes and thus you will notice the 2/3 cup of flour.  

However, most of us use volume to measure liquid for cooking.

Here are some useful measures to remember.

1 cup = 8 fluid ounces [fl oz] - size of traditional English china tea cup 
1 cup = 16 tablespoons [tbsp] 
1 tbsp = 3 teaspoons [tsp]

1 pint = 16 fl oz = 2 cups 

1 gallon = 8 pints 
1 gallon = 4 quarts
1 quart = 2 pints

1 litre = 1.75975 pints
1 pint = 568.261 ml
1 gallon = 4.54609 litre 

Distance

12 inches = 1 foot
3 feet = 1 yard
1760 yards = 1 mile

1 inch = 2.54 cm
3.28 feet = 1 meter
1.61 Km = 1 mile

However, we just have to think about inches when we are cooking or baking.

4 inches roughly equal to 10 cm
6 inches roughly equal to 15 cm
8 inches roughly equal to 20 cm
10 inches roughly equal to 25 cm
12 inches roughly equal to 30 cm

And finally, you should have noticed our eggs are sold in 6 or 12 - this is because 

12 items makes a dozen
and there are 20 in a score
1 gross = 12 dozen = 144 

I hope you find the above useful in reclaiming our heritage!

Fatless Sponge Cake & Cream Cake

Deacon Julio and Seminarian Daniel, brothers from my community, are coming for a late lunch today. I am serving Valencian paella and we are having a cream cake for dessert. 

The cream cake is made from a fatless sponge.  Misia, a Polish friend, shared with me her fatless sponge recipe and I have modified her recipe and this is my version of Misia's fatless sponge. 



Ingredients:

5 large free range eggs [12 oz with shells] - separated 
3/4 cup sugar golden caster sugar - 6 oz - divide this into two equal portions 
2/3 cup McDougalls Supreme Sponge - 3 oz
2/3 cup potato flour - I use mąka ziemniaczana, Polish potato flour 4 oz 
a little Valencian orange oil - I am sure you can use vanilla extract instead or any other flavourings of your liking 

There is no raising agent, butter or oil in this fatless sponge cake recipe.

Line an 8 inch or 20 cm round baking tin.
Sift the two types of flour together.
Whisk the egg whites with a pinch of cream of tartar and then add half of the sugar, a tablespoon at a time and whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks.
Whisk the egg yolks and sugar until white and fluffy.
Fold in the sifted flour into the whisked egg yolks and then add the orange oil.
Fold in the whisked egg whites and then pour the cake mixture into the prepared 8 inch round baking tin. 
Bake the cake mixture in a preheated oven at 175 C for 50 minutes. Increase the temperature to 180 C for the last 10 minutes of baking time. 
When the cake is cooked, cool the cake on a cooling rack.



For filling and decorating the cake, I used the following:

600 ml [1 pt or 20 fl oz] double cream
icing sugar - as much or as little as you wish
400 grams [14 ozs] strawberries 
your favourite liqueur
Valencian orange oil or any flavour of your choice
strawberry jam

The cake should rise to over 3 inches tall and slice the cake into three equal cross sections.
Drizzle each cross section of the cake with your favourite liqueur liberally.
Whip the double cream, flavour it with orange oil, sweeten with icing sugar to taste.
Extract some of of the whipped double cream and add some chopped fresh strawberries. [You need to reserve 14 - 16 strawberries, depending on size for decorating the top of the cake.]
Spread strawberry jam liberally on each cross section.
Then fill the cake with whipped cream and chopped strawberries.
Then cover the cake with whipped cream and place strawberries on the top edge of the cake and scatter rainbow 100s and 1000s.
Refrigerate the decorated cake for at least an hour to allow the whipped cream to set before serving.  



This cake will cut 14 slices but some people might eat 2 or 3 slices! 

Tortilla Española, Spanish Tortilla

Sam Skinner, a brother from my community, came to visit today and I made Spanish omelette for him and he ate this with Qingdao beer 青島啤酒.



I thought I would share with you my recipe for making Tortilla Española or otherwise better known as Spanish omelette.

I have used many types of potatoes to make Spanish omelette and my favourite is Vivaldi potatoes. 

450 grams [16 oz] Vivaldi baking potatoes - peeled and sliced finely
4 free range eggs - I use medium size eggs 
1/2 a medium size onion - peeled and diced finely
3/4 tsp Himalayan salt
freshly ground white pepper to taste
extra virgin olive oil

In a hot frying pan, sauté the thinly sliced potatoes on both sides in olive oil - do not brown the potatoes and sprinkle some diced onions.
When the sliced potatoes are cooked, drop these into the beaten eggs and sprinkle the salt and pepper. 
The potatoes need to be sautéd in batches - perhaps five batches for this amount of potatoes.
Let the potatoes soak in the beaten egg for half an hour or so.
In a 20 cm round frying pan, cook the omelette on both sides, turning over the omelette with the help of a plate. 
Do not over cook the omelette and the inside of the omelette should be moist - which means it should be slightly runny. 

Dehraduni Basmati Rice

Dehraduni basmati rice is from North India, grown in Dehradun, Uttar Pradesh by the Himalayan foothills. 

My neighbour, Ajun's mother, from number 18, Bhavna comes from Dehradun and she has given me 5 oz of this rice, which could feed two people.  It is an old rice and thus it is yellow in colour. It is best to use old rice when cooking pulao. 

She reminded me that I should soak the rice grains before cooking. I have therefore washed the rice grains several times in cold water, without breaking the rice grains, and soaked the rice grains salted water for four hours prior boiling the rice in 1.5 L of salted water for 6 minutes before draining the rice and then placing the rice on a bed on sliced potatoes with 50 grams [2 oz] butter and a little Himalayan salt in a closed pan and cook in low heat for over an hour. This method is described already in my post on Chicken Pulao. 

The purpose of today's post is to experiment cooking Dehradun basmati rice and to evaluate the quality of the rice to help me decide if I want to buy this rice instead of sella rice. 

Evaluation:
I have now cooked, served and eaten the Dehraduni basmati rice and I have concluded that it is not as robust as Pakistani sella rice. It does not have the fragrant associated with basmati rice. Dehraduni basmati rice is very expensive and the cheapest which I have found, can be bought from HDS Food. However, the rice is better than any of the basmati I have used, which could be found from normal supermarkets in London. 

Notes: Regarding the sizes of cups. A universal cup is 8 fluid ounces or 227 ml. An espresso is 90 ml in size and a rice cup is 150 ml in size. Fr Jose thinks a person can eat 90 ml of rice and Dr Marie thinks 150 ml cup can serve two people. As for me, I eat 2 tbsp of rice per meal.  However, as I am doing this experiment on Dehradun basmati rice, I am cooking all the rice which my neighbour has kindly given to me, which is 150 ml of rice, which is roughly about 5 oz. 

Paella

Joe and Joan Fernandes from the US are coming for lunch on Tuesday 5th July and Dilip, Dr Marie's son, has come home from India, who is also joining Dr Marie and me for lunch. Joe is a surgeon, trained in Italy at Padua University. Joan is a counsellor. So there are lots of very educated people for lunch!  

Paella originated from Valencia, Spain and in this post I will share with you my Valencian paella recipe.



First of all, I want to thank Fr José Manuel Hernández Castellón, who is from Valencia, who has helped me to perfect my paella Valenciana.  He wrote to me last year that my paella is as good as his mother's and I think this is an excellent commendation. 

Paella is both the dish and the pan in which this rice dish is cooked. I do not have a paella pan and I use either my skillet or my wok. I do not see the point of buying lots of pots and pans.

The most important part of paella is the rice - not the chicken or vegetables and the rice grains must not stick to one another and yet it must be cooked. The rice must be tasty and it must not be soaking in a soup - this dish should be dry. 

Ingredients - to feed 4 people [250 grams rice] or 5 people [300 grams rice]

1.5 kg [just over 3 lbs in weight] corn fed chicken or free range fresh chicken - cut into ten pieces depending on the size of the chicken - do not remove the skin of the chicken
450 ml fresh chicken stock - very hot [as in boiling hot] [540 ml if you are using 300 grams of rice] + more chicken stock
1 Kallo organic chicken stock cube
250 grams arroz bomba [a special paella rice from Valencia] and I use the brand La Fallera, which is recommended by Fr José
2 tsp Hungarian paprika - the best paprika in the world comes from Hungaria
a few good pinches of good quality Iranian saffron soaked in 20 ml cold water overnight - the best saffron in the world comes from Iran 
1 tsp Himalayan salt
3 sprigs of rosemary [optional] washed - I use rosemary from the garden
3 tbsp good quality extra virgin olive oil
1 lemon - cut into wedges for serving
12 langoustines, crayfish or king prawns with shells - I soak these king prawns in vodka and salt as soon as I get home from the shops and refrigerate the prawns until I need them - allow 2 king prawns per person 
any green beans such as stringless beans, helda beans, sugar snap peas - allow 2 stringless beans or helda beans per person and I cut these into 2 inch lengths - alternatively, use 100 grams sugar snap peas or any other green beans such as French beans - I am using sugar snap peas today because Waitrose is selling these at discounted price 
200 grams [7 oz] cooked butter beans  I use butterbeans from a tin from Wairtose
200 grams [7 oz] artichokes - I use artichokes from a tin from Waitrose

There are no peppers or onions or chorizo or any sausages in the original Valencian paella!  Originally, there was no seafood in Valencian paella, and the original Valencian paella had a mixture of rabbit and chicken. I cannot eat rabbit because the bone structure of rabbit reminds me of little Charlemagne. However, Fr Jose informs me that one can add other seafood if one wants to make a modern paella. 

I add the stock cube, paprika, saffron liquid, salt into the fresh, boiling hot, homemade chicken stock in a separate cooking pot. 

Sauté the king prawns in a frying pan after washing off the salt and alcohol, remove and set aside when the prawns turn pink and whatever you do, do not overcook the prawns!

Chickens have a strange, smelly odour, at least those from London, and I dislike this smell.  I therefore add shallots and ginger to my paella to get rid of this smell. The original paella does not have these two ingredients perhaps because the chickens in Spain eat natural food. I slice and julienne these finely and sauté these in the extra virgin olive oil before I sauté the chicken pieces. One should not be able to taste or smell or see these two secret ingredients at the end of the cooking. 

I then add extra virgin oil - yes extra virgin oil - into my largest cooking pan [whose bottom is 25 cm or 10 inch in diameter] and add the finely sliced shallot and finely minced ginger and then I sauté the chicken pieces. When the chicken pieces have been browned on both sides, I removed the chicken pieces and set these aside. [Note: I do not sauté the chicken breast pieces because if the breast of chicken were to be over cooked, it would not taste good.

I then pick a leaf off the Indians in making pulao and fried the rice grains. The Indians fry their rice grains when making pulao to ensure the rice grains to not stick together. I then add the hot boiling chicken stock with all above mentioned ingredients into the rice grains. I then place the chicken pieces on top of the rice and chicken stock. I then add beans on top of the rice and around the chicken.

About half way in the cooking process, I checked on the rice and I felt that it needed more liquid and I therefore spooned hot boiling chicken stock on those uncooked rice grains which were protruding from the paella. I must have added about four tablespoons additional hot boiling stock. 

When the liquid is almost absorbed, I add the sprigs of rosemary and the artichokes and cover the pan [the top diameter of my cooking pan is 36 cm in diameter] and let it cook in low heat for 45 minutes. The idea is for the bottom of the rice to be browned. 

After 45 minutes of slow cooking, I remove the lid of pan and rosemary, add the cooked prawns and paper kitchen towels on the top of the paella, cover the lid and let the paella stand for at least 20 minutes. I cover the pan with a blanket of towels to keep the paella warm. [The paper kitchen towels will absorb any excess liquid from the paella. In the old days, Spanish people put newspaper on top of their paella to remove any excess liquid.]

After the rice has been left to stand for 20 minutes, I add lemon wedges to the top of the paella removing paper towels. Serve the paella immediately, unless you like cold paella. 

If you do not have a weighing scale, then use 1 espresso cup [90 ml] of rice for each person and for each cup of rice, add 2 cups [180 ml] of chicken stock. The maximum amount of cooked rice you can have in a pan is 1 inch thick. [1 inch = 2.5 cm] Therefore the more people you serve, the bigger the pan you need, and the bigger the hob you need. My largest hob is 10 inch in diameter and therefore the bottom of pan I can use is also 10 inch in diameter and the maximum number of people I can serve is 4 or 5 people. 

If you are one of these people who do not like green beans to be overcooked, then you can cook the sugar snap peas separately, drop these into very cold water to stop the cooking process, and season these with a little salt and drizzle with extra virgin oil and set these aside. When you add the cooked prawns on the rice, you can add some of these cooked peas as well.  Traditionally, the Spanish would overcook the beans and they seem to like overcooked beans. 

In the old days in Valencia, poor people ate paella. They caught rabbits from their surrounding areas, killed a chicken which had been running around their garden and cooked these with rice and beans. However, other people started cooking paella, they began to add exotic ingredients and made this dish into a very expensive dish.

In London, the La Fallera arroz bomba retails for £6 a kilo, which makes it the most expensive rice I keep in stock. However, Fr Jose and Seminarian Daniel have bought for me arroz bomba from Spain last year.  

Going back a couple of hundred of years, the people in Valencia cooked paella with rats - not the rats you find in the sewage in London. These were water rats which were large, herbivorous, semiaquatic rodents. Nothing disgusting about these rats! And the poor people caught these rats and cook paella with them.  In the last one hundred years, they substituted these rats with rabbits and chickens. 

Spanish people sauté the chicken pieces in olive oil and they then pour water into the pan and simmer this for a time and they then pour rice into the pan in the form of a cross.  The problems with this way of cooking paella are that the chicken becomes insipid and the taste of the rice is also not optimal. This is why I use homemade chicken stock instead of water and let the chicken pieces sit on top of rice and while the rice is being cooked, the chicken pieces are being steamed cooked. 

Arroz means rice and bomba means bomb in English. Rice was introduced into Spain by the Muslims who ruled Spain for some 800 years. So when I meet Fr Jose, I often remind him that he is half muslim! LOL! A joke! 

I have a friend who finds arroz bomba very difficult to digest and she has suggested substituting this rice with others. My other Spanish friends who live in London use basmati rice.  As arroz bomba is difficult to digest, Spanish people eat paella for lunch and not for dinner. 

However, I will continue to use La Fallera arroz bomba to make paella.