A hankering for the real thing ....

Something less serious, on my favorite subject – FOOD, Glorious food.

Good ol' chicken rice, you can't get it easily anymore. By this I mean chicken rice cooked the traditional way. A nice chicken stock is made from the legs, necks, etc and then used to boil the rice with fat you liposuctioned from the chooks; enhanced with ginger, salt, and other ingredients.. Rice cooked this way is nice enough to eat on its own, to borrow a phrase.

The chicken will be steamed not boiled as nowadays; no roast chicky for the true gourmand. Wonder who steams chickens the old fashioned way anymore. Steamed chooks actually taste sweeter as they retain the juices which are otherwise lost when boiled.

I recall when I was a wee kid my mum used to cook chicken rice for the whole gang on alternate Sundays. She reared her own chooks in a hutch I built for her at the back of the house; damn proud of it I was. She'd boil water and select the fattest unfortunate chook, pulled the feathers from the gullet area, then enlist the services of her most blood thirsty son namely yours truly here - the rest of her brood were too squeamish; and I'd blithely slit the poor bugger's throat while she held on to the squirming bird's legs and neck. Norman Bates's rival was on the prowl again! Now I do the squirming as I shudder at the thought of how I could do it then. It was by the grace of Providence I didn't graduate to become a serial killer.

Nostalgic, those were the days. Chicken rice you get now just don't taste as good anymore. The rice is boiled with bottled stock or cubes with margarine, coming out a sickly pale yellow and tasting as bad. Chickens are boiled and then immersed in cool water; ostensibly to improve texture. Old mamas will tell you to avoid such boiled chooks if you are in the midst of a coughing spell; don't really know why.

You ever thought how many plates of chicken rice can be served from just 1 carcass? I did, but never figured it out. Suffice to say, it is many. Vendors employ many tactics to squeeze out as many servings as they can. The breast meat is often cut into 2 layers as it is thick. One layer will have the original skin, then the second layer will be adorned by skin transplanted from another unsaleable part of the chook such as the back. Another trick is to smash the flat of the cleaver on the portion, squashing and loosening out the meat to make it look more substantial. This trick is the favorite of vendors in Johor Bahru as I have observed. I know as I grew up in ol' JB.

A must have condiment with this meal is ground chilli mix - made from chillies, garlic, lime juice, sugar and salt. Dip the chicken slices in this mix, heavenly taste. The mix you get from vendors are made with artificial vinegar or acetic acid, the taste is way off the mark. Sometimes, you just can't cut any corners.

Sometimes, the simplest things are the best.