Lo Mai Kai
If you're looking for a dish that works as breakfast, lunch, dinner or even an afternoon snack, look no further than lo mai kai. The main ingredients of lo mai kai are those which make up its name - glutinous rice with chicken. Simple, really.
If you cook regularly, the items used to season the dish are likely to be in your kitchen cupboard already . So no desperate scouring of the markets is needed.
My aunt often whips up this dish. She told me her method for making lo mai kai and is adamant that one should not add Chinese sausage or anything else - apart from dried mushrooms - to the dish. Her reason? It can corrupt the chicken flavour.
At the risk of incurring my aunt's wrath, I think it is perfectly fine to add Chinese sausages. The only reason not to is the extra work involved in removing the sausage skins.
If you wish to achieve a darker caramel colour for the rice, add one or two drops of dark soya sauce to the rice before you steam it.
I may disagree with my aunt's approach to ingredients, but I love her method of cooking.
You should steam the rice until it is cooked, then steam it a further ten minutes after assembling the lo mai kai into individual bowls. This ensures that the chicken is not overcooked, making it succulent, moist and with a wonderful texture. I use chicken fillet in the recipe. It's lower in fat - good news for health fans. If you prefer chicken thigh meat, get it from the wet market, where you can ask the seller to de-bone it for you.
Another tip from my aunt is to steam the mushrooms with the rice. This ensures they are nicely cooked and tender and that the grains absorb the fungi flavour. You can either use ceramic rice bowls for making lo mai kai, or get the disposable aluminium foil type.
This dish can also be kept up to two weeks if you wrap it in foil and freeze it once it has cooled down. Simply reheat when you want to consume it.