A culinary misadventure

I felt strange (but actually good) standing on the kitchen on wheels set of Mobile Kusina (aired every Friday at 10 a.m. on GMA 7). It felt like you’re on a Metro Manila Filmfest float, except that there is a gas range there and a dining table.

That morning in Mobile Kusina (location: Sta. Cruz, Manila), I was made to cook the Singaporean dish Hainanese chicken and I stood there with a dressed chicken to my left and Lolit Solis to my right and I wasn’t sure at that point who or which was the better company.

The dressed chicken was just there – lying quietly. But Lolit was all over the place – stuffing Purefoods canned goods and kitchen utensils and decors into a big black plastic bag. No, she wasn’t there to cook (although she can cook good pancit). She was just there to help me out. But did she – actually? I could have done it alone and, sigh, brought home a bigger talent fee.

Although I had a lot of fun in the show, it was a difficult task to do and what made it tougher for me was the fact that I had to work with a gas range and I’ve always been scared of it – like it’s going to explode on my face anytime. In our house where there is a cocinera who runs a neat kitchen, we use a gas range. But in the halfway house where I’m on my own, it’s the electric stove for me, baby. And please, no oven for me – in spite of the fact that I grew up in a house with a mother who was forever baking and made wedding cakes for a hobby.

Before I began cooking, I spent quite some time arguing with the floor director, Baby Briones (also from Startalk) because the wind kept putting off the flames in the gas range and she still insisted that it was safe for me to use. Yeah, she can say that because she was a safe distance away from stove, while I was the one standing right in front of it. I needed my face for the next day’s Startalk – I pleaded with her. But Baby – or Jik-jik to us in Startalk – is one tough cookie and I was left with no choice but to follow orders.

And so off I went to cook the dish they decided to call Butch’s Patok sa Talk Hainanese Chicken – starting with segment 1. (The recipe is divided into three segments.) Faced with the dressed chicken, I felt so glad that it was Magnolia because at least I was sure it was fresh. I felt its skin and it felt fresh and I smelled it and it had no smell. It was fresh as fresh can be and that was enough inspiration for me to cook well.

The first thing I had to do was stuff the dressed chicken with half a piece of ginger, a whole onion (quartered) and four pieces of lemon grass or tanglad. At that point, I realized that the lemon grass had to be chopped in half and Lolit was so useful here. She quickly handed me a knife – blade first. Oh my dear Lolit. She can be so sweet.

Then I rubbed the chicken with salt to add more flavor to it and remove whatever "lansa" there is left. After that, I placed the chicken in a tall pot and filled it with water and then threw in whatever remained of the ginger, onion and lemon grass. I let it boil for 40 minutes. After that, I turned off the heat and let the chicken stand for another 30 minutes to allow it to absorb even more the flavors from the ginger, onion and lemon grass.

With a larger pair of tongs, I removed the chicken from the tall pot and put it in a bucket of ice and gave it an ice bath. I had to do this to stop it from cooking any further because it can get too soft and I was making Hainanese chicken and not chicken sandwich.

From there, I proceeded to segment 2 – or how to make Hainanese Rice. First I had to check if the Star Margarine for sautéing was still there – or if Lolit had already stuffed it in her black plastic bag. I think she did, except that there was an extra tub as backup. So I proceeded to heat a scoop of Star Margarine in a pan and later sautéed onion and garlic in it. Then, I put in uncooked (but washed) rice and a little salt. I let it stay in the pan for some 3 to 4 minutes.

After that, I transferred the rice into a rice cooker and later poured into it the stock that I made while boiling the chicken.

While waiting for the rice to be cooked and making sure Lolit didn’t cart off with the rice cooker, I went on with segment 3 – the easiest part: how to make Hainanese sauce. Here, all I had to do was stir-fry in peanut oil grated ginger and wansoy and put in a little iodized salt and I was done.

Actually, It’s best to eat Hainanese chicken with three different kinds of sauces: the Hainanese sauce, which I made – plus chili sauce and kecap manis (the pambansang sawsawan of Indonesia), both of which you can buy in the supermarket.

Then it was taste test time – my favorite portion (and especially Lolit’s). Actually, before I go on any further, I would first like to make a confession. Prior to my Mobile Kusina stint, I hated Hainanese Chicken. Maybe because most of the Hainanese Chicken dishes I’ve tasted in local restaurants have this "lansa" taste to it.

But the Hainanese Chicken I cooked for Mobile Kusina was different. It tasted good and I’m not taking credit for it. Credit should instead go to chef Rachelle Santos of the SMC Culinary Center. It was she who studied and tried out the Hainanese Chicken recipe first before I cooked it for the benefit of the Mobile Kusina viewers.

But now I’m claiming the recipe as my own. After all, it’s now called Butch’s Patok sa Talk Hainanese Chicken. Their mistake was to have named the dish after me. And now it’s mine.

I’m sure that when I die, no street will be named after me. Hah! Why would I still want that? I’m still alive and I’ve been immortalized in a recipe.

Oh, but why did it have to be chicken? Frankly, I don’t like the sound of it. Chicken, chicken, chicken.

But it could have been worse. I could have been a ham.