khao man gai

Everyone else is doing it, so now it's my turn! Khao man gai is the Thai version of chicken rice. Much like it's Singaporean counterpart, Hainese Chicken Rice, it has a legion of devout followers. Everyone is very particular about exactly how the dish is prepared, so I'm not going to claim my take on it as anything other than my version of the dish!

My inspiration comes from many street-side meals I enjoyed while studying in Thailand. While it looks deceptively plain, the dish couldn't be more flavorful. More recently, my good friend Lan, posted about the dish in her blog. Our friend Steph also made the dish recently, and has been soliciting input from her parents in Thailand. Add that to the plethora of recipes online, and deciding exactly which technique I was going to follow was surprisingly hard. In the end, like Lan, I followed this bloggers recipe and adjusted it slightly. Here's how it went down:

Chicken

• Bring enough water to submerge your small chicken to a boil.
• Add 2 tbls salt and a few slices of ginger to the water.
• Dunk the chicken in boiling water and bring the water back to a boil.
• Turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let stand for 50 minutes (for 3.25lb bird, adjust for different size birds)
• Remove the chicken from the hot water and dunk it into an ice bath to bring it back to room temperature.

Rice

• Use the broth from the chicken to cook some long grain Jasmine rice.
• I used a 1:1 ratio of rice to broth, and rinsed the rice first. I recommend following the directions on the rice bag.
• I added 1 whole clove of garlic, a pinch of salt, a dash of soy sauce and 2 slices of ginger into the water
• I cooked the rice in a rice cooker.

Sauce

• I followed Lan's recipe, but I used fermented bean paste, not black bean sauce. 
• I also cut the recipe down by half, which should be plenty for 2-4 people.

Soup

• I brought some of the broth back to a boil and seasoned it with salt.
• I added some chopped kale before serving.

Green Mango Salad
In addition to all this deliciousness, I also made a green mango salad. I bought a new serrated peeler to help me cut green mangoes (or papayas) into thin strips, and it worked like a charm. All this made for a ton of food, but it was well worth it!

Ingredients (serves 2)
1 green mango, cut into very thin strips
4-8 cherry tomatoes, halved
2-4 green beans, cut into 3/4" pieces
handful of toasted peanuts

Dressing
1 tbls fish sauce
1 tbls sugar
1 tbls lime juice
1 tbls dried shrimp (optional)
1 small clove garlic, minced
2-3 small chilies, finely diced (to taste)

Just mix everything up and your good to go!