Thursday, September 02, 2004

The Chicken Rice Sutra Vol. 1

Let me tell you a story about rice. Not just any old kind of rice, though. This story is about a specific kind of rice. Not the raw kind, or the brown kind, but the kind that comes with chicken. Yes, they call it chicken rice.

Chicken rice. A well-loved dish among many Chinese, and this dish can be found almost everywhere, albeit in variant forms, in many Asian countries. Imagine a pot of fragrant rice grains lovingly inundated with chicken broth cooked painstakingly over a mellow fire to urge the flavour out of the chicken bones, together with garlic and ginger and pandan which in the right combination gives that characteristic aroma to the rice. Well cooked, the grains of rice glisten while giving off wafts of headily-scented steam, each grain coated sinfully in the distilled essence of the broth and spices. Imagine a dish of this heavenly-smelling rice, topped with chicken cooked with as much effort, chicken whose meat is so tender and smooth it gently parts at a prod from a fork or a tooth, releasing its juicy secrets to the sincere worshipper of this shrine of palatial magnificence that is chicken rice.

Why all this ado about chicken rice, you ask? Why not fried kway teow, another quintessential signature dish, or laksa, or any other kind of food? What's in a dish, that chicken rice which we eat, if it were laksa would taste just as sweet. For I have a passion with chicken rice, is my answer to you, you who are young and have much to learn about the inner mysteries of chicken rice, this simple yet deeply profound symbol of all that was, is and is yet to be. From a humble plate of chicken rice, much of the inexplicable mysteries of the world can be seen in a different light, and maybe even some explanation might be found.

And now, for our first lesson on chicken rice. As we all know, the most delicious rice must be a harmonious balance of good rice and good chicken. If the rice is of perfect quality but the chicken is sub-standard, the dish will not be perfect. Similarly, the dish will not reach its full potential if top-grade chicken is served with poorly cooked rice. Both chicken and rice are equally important, and if both good chicken and good rice are combined, their effect on the quality of the chicken rice is greatly potentiated. Understand?

That was just a simple primer for your unenlightened minds, so that you may reflect on the profoundness of something that might seem to you very simple and even stupid.

Think deeply, and let the essence of chicken rice fill your mind.

Avaris / 9/02/2004 10:37:00 PM

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