Balsamic Chicken with Butter Rice

I fell in love with balsamic vinegar when I was in Europe. I dipped my bread in it and used it as salad dressing for cherry tomato and mozzarella cheese. Over here mozzarella cheese is very expensive, it costs me about SGD7+ to get a small tub of 125g. The next time I go to Europe I will make sure I eat more of the cheese. One of the best deals I discovered is McDonald's salad cup. The salad comes in a cup and the toppings are 5 cherry tomatoes & 5 mozzarella cheese, it only cost me EUR1.99 if I remember correctly. Ask for balsamic vinegar dressing ;) Oh I had this at Austria, not too sure is it common in other parts of Europe. Ok back to recipes, recently I spotted this balsamic chicken recipe and it really taste good, have modified the recipe to share.

Balsamic Chicken

2 thighs or 3 drumsticks

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

4 tsp brown sugar

1/2 tsp olive oil

Methods

1. Marinate the chicken with 3/4 of the seasoning (vinegar, sugar and oil) for few hours or overnight.

2. Heat pan (using happycall pan) with a little oil and cook the chicken together with the marinating sauce over low fire.

3. Once the chicken is cooked, serve.

4. Pour the remaining 1/4 seasoning into the pan, once boiled drizzle the sauce over the chicken.

Note

Recipe modified from http://munchministry.com/recipe/balsamic-chicken-with-roast-vegetables-2/

(Recipe calls for 4 tbsp of olive oil but I only used 1/2 tsp as I don't want my dish to be so oily. It turns out fine)

Butter Rice

1.5 cup rice grain

1.5 cup water

30g butter

4 garlic cloves (minced)

1/3-1/2 carrot (grated)

1 tbsp golden raisin

1 cinnamon stick

Pinch of turmeric powder (as coloring)

Methods

1. Rinse rice grain.

2. In a rice cooker, add in rice grain, water, carrot, raisins and turmeric powder.

3. Heat pan with butter, once melted add garlic and saute till fragrant. Add cinnamon and give it a few good stirs before transferring to the rice cooker. Stir well and on the power of the rice cooker.

4. Once cooked, fluff the rice and serve.

Note

I am using the rice cooker's measuring cup to measure my rice grain & water.

Herbal Prawn

Yes another prawn dish, please don't laugh! I know about cholestrol issue but I cannot help it. Come on, a few prawns won't kill....hahaha.... Ok this is an amazingly easy way to whip up a bowl of flavorful herbal prawns by just throwing everything into a pot. I think I am quite lucky to get this right combination by guts feel, don't we just love how our moms did their cooking by "Agaration"? ;)

Ingredients
10 medium size prawns
2 tbsp dried anchoives (de-boned type)
2-3 dang gui (angelica root)
1 dang shen (codonopsis root)
1/2 tbsp gou qi zi (wolfberry)
4 red dates (seedless)
2 cup water
Pinch of salt
1/2 tbsp chinese wine

Methods
1) Rinse the prawns and set aside.
2) In a pot, boil 2 cups of water to boil and add in all the chinese herbs and dried anchoives. Boil for 2 minutes, cover with lid and simmer at low fire for about 30mins.
3) The water level should be reduced to half by now, add salt and bring water to boil again. Add prawns.
4) Once the prawns are cooked, add wine and off fire. Do not overcook the prawns.

Notes
Here's a website showing the images of various chinese herbs for reference:

http://www.denverchinesemedicine.com/BulkHerbs.html