Chicken and Rice Soup with Asian Flavors

This recipe is still a work in progress. I started with a whole 5 pound chicken which produced 2 huge breasts. I poached both breasts to make a broth even though I knew that it would be more meat than what I needed for the soup. But what I really wanted was the flavorful broth and one breast would not make a broth with as much flavor as both breasts. The second breast was perfect for adding to a salad another day so I got at least 2 meals for my effort.

I also ended up with more rice than I thought was appropriate for the soup. Next time I'll start with about 2/3 cup dry rice. On the other hand it's nice to have leftover rice to make a fried rice dish, so perhaps next time I'll make a larger pot of rice and then make chicken fried rice the next day. That sounds like a plan!

2 bone in chicken breasts with the skin attached, from a 5 pound chicken (wings removed)
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 whole cinnamon stick
1 whole star anise broken into pieces
6 whole cloves
1 black cardamom pod
a 1-inch piece of fresh ginger cut into 1/4-inch thick slices
5 to 6 cups of water

1 cup brown jasmine rice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups water

Coconut oil, 1 to 2 tablespoons as desired
About 1 cup of 1/4-inch thick celery slices
About 1/2 pound of carrots cut into 1/2-inch dice
About 1 cup of coarsely chopped onion (leek?)
2 to 3 tablespoons fish sauce or to taste

1 large bunch of fresh cilantro
Sesame oil
Hot pepper sauce

Diced daikon radish would be a nice addition to the veggie mix.
Napa cabbage would be good.

First poach the chicken breasts. Place the chicken breasts in a 3 quart or larger saucepan along with the seasonings and enough water to completely submerge the breasts, at least 5 cups. Turn the heat on to medium, cover the pan, and bring the water to a gentle simmer. Do not boil. Turn the heat to low and simmer the breasts until the broth turns clear and then remove the pan from the heat and allow the breasts to at least partially cool in the broth.

Steam the rice while the chicken breasts are cooking. Place the rice, salt, and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil, then turn the heat down to the lowest setting or put the pan on a low burner with a flame tamer, cover the pan and allow the rice to steam until all the liquid is absorbed. Set aside. (This made more rice than necessary, I had at least a cup leftover after adding as much as I wanted to the finished soup.)

Heat the coconut oil in a large soup pot set over medium heat. Add the vegetables, toss to coat with the hot oil, cover the pot and allow the veggies to sweat for a couple of minutes. Uncover the pot and sauté the vegetables until they are slightly softened, a couple more minutes.

Meanwhile, remove the chicken breasts from their pot and set them aside to cool until they can be handled. Strain the broth into the soup pot. Season the soup with a couple more tablespoons of fish sauce and bring the soup to a simmer.

While the soup is simmering, shred the chicken meat to be used in the soup, you will probably only need the meat from one of the breasts if you started with a 5 pound chicken. Remove the chicken meat from the bones, setting the bones and skin aside for another use (they can still be used in a long simmered poultry stock). Shred the meat into bite sized pieces.

Finish the soup when the vegetables are cooked to your liking. Add the cooked rice and shredded chicken. Simmer until the rice and chicken are heated through. Taste the broth and add more fish sauce or salt if needed.

Garnish each bowl of soup with a drizzle of sesame oil and a handful of chopped cilantro leaves. Serve with the hot sauce on the side to allow each diner to season the soup to their own taste.

Green Quinoa Pilaf

This recipe is inspired by a dish that I used to make years ago. It's based on a rice dish that is somewhat like risotto which I converted to a baked rice recipe. I'm not eating much rice anymore, especially the white rice that this recipe calls for. But Dave has fondly recalled Green Rice many times and fairly recently, so when I had the convergence of a big bag of quinoa, yet another harvest of spinach, loads of spring onions that needed to be thinned out of the onion patch, and a big bunch of bolting cilantro this dish popped into my head.  I weighed the greens as I went and rounded to the closest whole amount for the recipe, the volume measurement is what the recipe called for but I just eyeballed it. Really, the precise amount is not important, use more or less depending on what you have or what you like.

Quinoa is one of the few vegetable sources of complete protein, it has all nine essential amino acids. It's a pseudograin, meaning it's a seed that is used like a grain but technically true grains come from grasses (monocots) and quinoa comes from a broadleaf plant (dicot). But healthy eating aside, quinoa is delicious and I think it outdoes its refined polished cousin rice in this dish.

To convert it to a rice dish just substitute a like amount of white rice but increase the baking time, it may take about 45 minutes. The original recipe called for parsley instead of cilantro, substitute a like amount of parsley for the cilantro.

2 tablespoons olive oil  (about 30 ml.)
4 tablespoons butter  (about 55 g.)
4 oz./115 g. minced scallions or spring onions (about 1 cup)
2 oz./55g. minced cilantro  (about 1 cup)
8 oz./225 g. finely chopped spinach  (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 ½ cups quinoa  (9 oz./255 g.)
1 teaspoon salt
Fresh ground black pepper
1 ½ cups hot chicken stock  (.35 liter)
Crescenza cheese (aka Stracchino), or Parmigiano

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Butter a 1 ½ to 2 quart size casserole. Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter and set aside. Heat the olive oil and the other 2 tablespoons of the butter in a medium sized saute pan over medium heat. Saute the scallions until they soften, stir in the cilantro and then the spinach, stir until the spinach wilts. Add the quinoa, salt, and black pepper to taste, stir to incorporate into the greens. Turn the quinoa and greens mixture into the casserole, add the hot stock, drizzle with the melted butter. Cover the casserole and place it in the hot oven. Bake about 30 minutes, or until the quinoa has absorbed the stock and is tender.

Serve hot with thin slices of the cheese placed on top, it should get melty from the heat of the hot pilaf, if not, run it under the broiler briefly. Serve immediately.

Makes 3 to 4 servings.

Note: Crescenza is an oozy soft ripened cow's milk cheese that doesn’t have a rind. A generous dusting of Parmigiano would be good instead, that's what is called for in the rice version.