Sticky rice with chicken, mushroom, sausage (claypot or fried/steamed) - Chinese risotto

Sometimes we wonder if the Chinese learned to cook claypot rice and sticky fried / steamed rice from Marco Polo or did the globetrotter(s) bring the idea back to Italy and thus risotto was born.

This is a delicious one-dish meal. It is usually listed on the menu of Asian restaurants as "raw fried glutinous rice". Though simple, it gives out a complexity of aromas from meat, vegetable, seafood and sausages.

No need to pre-soak glutinous rice. The result is soft fluffy but not water logged soggy rice.
A balanced meal, though not extremely "healthy", it is absolutely delicious. 

INGREDIENTS

Glutinous rice - 3 cup

Long grain rice - 1 cup

Chicken stock - 3 cups

Water - 4 TBS

Dried shitake mushrooms - 4 pieces (washed and soaked and sliced into quarters)

Chicken fillet - 200 g (sliced thinly and marinate in soy sauce)

Dried scallop (soak in hot water 3 times for at least 3 hours, discard first round of water)

or dried shrimp (washed and bashed)

Chinese sausages - about 2 sliced diagonally into 6 each (similar to using chorizo for paella)

Garlic (chopped)

Indian small shallot onion (sliced thinly)
Vegetable oil 3 TBS

Seasoning

Soy sauce (2 dark and 1 light)

Pepper to taste

Sesame oil (optional)

Garnish

spring onion slices and fresh coriander
fried garlic and shallot crisp

METHOD

1. Prepare fragrant oil and garlic/shallot crisps but frying gradually heating up garlic and shallot in cold oil. Be careful not to burn the crisp and turn off heat once the colour changes to golden yellow before turning brown as they continue cooking continues in the oil. Remove crisps and put on small serving dish.

2. Fry mushroom, chicken and dried shrimp (if using) till 80 % cooked. Dish up.

3. Add a little more oil to fry glutinous rice (if not using non-stick pot). Add a little water if required. Then add long-grain rice and continue frying till all the grains turn slightly translucent.

4. Add chicken stock to the rice. Mix in prefried mushroom, chicken and dried shrimp.

5. Place sausage slices on top. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes under medium-low heat.

6. Stir the rice mixture. Cover the lid back and cook for another 5 minutes with very low heat.

Acknowledgement : the above recipe is owed to the good advice from my homecook friend Sher who learnt it from her network of masterchefs, followed by lots of experimentation and practice. 

The same principle applies to cooking Asian claypot rice. In this variation, cook as you would boiled rice with additional savoury ingredients. The slightly burnt rice crust at the bottom is fragrant and delicious when mixed with the rest of the rice. Hot water can be added to remove the rice crust and drank as a soup so that nothing is wasted.