Glazed chicken rice | inspired by Hainanese dish

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***RECIPE, SERVE 4-6***

1 3.5 lb (1.6kg) whole chicken
2 cups (350-400g) long grain rice
a few sticks of lemongrass (can substitute with some lime zest)
2 thumb-size pieces of ginger
2-3 garlic cloves
toasted sesame oil
1 cucumber (or 4-5 mini ones)
1 shallot
1 fresh chili (optional, I forgot it)
1 bottle (approx. 12 oz, 355mL) rice vinegar
1/4 cup (50g) sugar
soy sauce
honey (optional)
salt

Put the chicken in a big pot with the lemongrass, one of your ginger pieces (don't bother peeling it), and about twice as much salt as you'd put on a chicken that size for roasting. Cover with water, put the lid on, and turn the heat on high just until it barely starts to boil. Lower the temperature until you can hold that state — a tiny little bubble every now and then. The chicken should take about an hour to poach.

Thinly slice the cucumber, shallot and chili, transfer to a bowl and cover in the entire bottle of rice vinegar. Stir in the sugar and put the bowl in the refrigerator to pickle.

You'll need to peel and finely chop the garlic and remaining ginger piece at some point, so you might as well do it now.

Poach the chicken to the doneness that you prefer and feel comfortable with, but I opted to hold it at 150ºF/65ºC (as measured in the deepest part of the breast) for 10 minutes to pasteurize the chicken while leaving it a little culinarily undercooked, because I planned to cook it again later in the oven. You do you.

Remove the chicken and let it cool down until you can handle it. Turn the heat on high under the poaching liquid and get it reducing — you want to boil it down to 3 cups (710mL) of liquid for cooking the rice.

Chop the chicken into individual bone-in pieces — I cut mine into 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings and 4 breast pieces. Throw the backbone into the boiling broth to add flavor.

When you've reduced the broth to about 3 cups, strain it and discard the solids. At this point you could put everything in the refrigerator and make dinner tomorrow, if you want.

A half hour before dinner, wash and drain the rice. Put some sesame oil in a pot over medium heat, put in the chopped garlic and ginger, and fry them until they just start to go golden. Put in the drained rice and toast it for a couple minutes, stirring constantly. Stir in your broth, cover and bring to boil, then reduce the heat to low and let the rice steam.

Pour most of the juice from the pickles into a wide pan, and put in about 1 part soy sauce to 2 parts pickle juice. Bring to a boil and reduce until syrupy. Taste and add some honey, if it needs it. Turn the heat off — it's very easily burned when reduced.

Get the broiler (grill) of your oven heating, transfer the chicken to a baking tray, oil it with your normal cooking oil and make sure the pieces are skin-side up. Broil the pieces until skins are brown and crispy, 5-10 minutes.

Dump the chicken pieces into the pan with the glaze and toss to coat. Serve with rice, pickles, and drizzle with any extra glaze you have in the pan.