I remember at the turn of the spring and summer of 2017, a Hainanese chicken rice store in Shanghai moved to Beijing and was located in the embassy district, a step away from the hustle and bustle of Taikoo Li.
Cai Lan's inscription, nostalgic decoration, has attracted many food media to report: "Half a Hainanese chicken, two bowls of chicken fat rice, a oyster sauce hot greens, the evening breeze gently sits in the shop and eats delicious food, comfortable and comfortable."
Five years ago, when many people did not know the origin of Hainan chicken rice, this dish of food priced at 60 to 80 yuan had taken the lead in making it one step into the list of atmospheric cuisine. I have a friend who ate a chicken meal here, pressed the road along Sanlitun East Third Street for two hours, and then found his own love, which is also wonderful to think.
In fact, at that time, there were already several Southeast Asian restaurants in Beijing that included Hainan chicken rice in their main food menus, but it has been tepid, until recent years, more and more Hainan chicken rice restaurants have branched out, and the price has also gone all the way up, from dozens of pieces to one or two hundred pieces.
In The Hainan Chicken Rice Restaurant with Cai Lan inscription, half a chicken plus a bowl of chicken fat rice is basically the standard at every table. © Public reviews
Thinking about the Hainan chicken rice secretly rubbing on the branches of high-grade food, it is not without a trace. In recent years, the differentiation and verticalization of the gastronomic field have become more and more obvious, as the saying goes, it is roll, and diners have slowly changed from the buffet era to refinement and refinement, and have begun to favor specialized stores that are divided into categories. Whether it is Sukiyaki, Vietnamese pho or Hainanese chicken rice, they all take advantage of this wave to stretch their fists and feet in first-tier cities.
When it comes to Singapore, the "birthplace" of Hainanese chicken rice, the catering industry here has a very polarized structure, one is a restaurant with a considerable per capita consumption, and the other is the Hawker Center and the Coffee Shop that can be eaten for dozens of yuan. Feel free to walk into one of the latter two, and there is a good chance that you will find a stall selling Hainanese chicken rice.
Regarding the origin of Hainanese chicken rice, it is always impossible to bypass Hainan and Singapore.
Around 1330, the Chinese merchant Wang Dayuan visited Singapore, and he said in the "Island Yi Zhiluo" that there were Chinese living on the island, which is the earliest recorded Chinese immigrant, and after the opening of the port of Singapore, the Chinese scattered in the Riau Islands, the Malay Peninsula, southern Thailand, and the coast of Fujian and Guangdong in China were heard of.
In the early years in Singapore, a casual walk into a restaurant or a large food style coffee shop, there is a good chance that you can find a stall selling Hainanese chicken rice. © Albert Lau
It was not until the 1930s that Hainanese began to migrate to the Malay Peninsula. In the "High Society Knowledge Contest", this group of immigrants from Qiongzhou was also discussed, "When the Hainanese landed in Singapore, the Cantonese, Fujianese, Hakka, and Chaozhou people who had already landed on the beach had already divided up carpentry, restaurants, technicians, Chinese medicine stores, grocery stores, and other industries, so Hainan immigrants had to engage in the work of Chinese's old business- the work of a cook."
Not only Singapore, but also other towns in Southeast Asia, Malacca, Penang and Kuala Lumpur, there are some Hainanese hawkers selling "chicken rice" along the street. They either carry a burden or hold a bamboo basket in both hands, and put a white chopped chicken on the other, while filling the oil rice. According to the records of the time, in order to attract business, many vendors will invite guests to join the "gambling size" pastime game when selling along the street, the vendor brought 3 dice and empty bowls with him, and gambled with people to win or lose with chicken rice, if the bet was won, chicken meat and rice were sent; if the bet was lost, it was given money, thus becoming the prototype of Hainan chicken rice.
Looking back at Hainan, Hainan is not without chicken rice, Hainan chicken rice is a combination of Hainan's earlier white cut Wenchang chicken and sacrificial chicken rice balls, which have developed into different forms and priorities. If you want to eat a chicken rice from fundamentalist Hainan, the chicken has to be castrated in Wenchangtan Niuzhen, eat banyan seeds to grow, use filling to induce fattening, cooking is generally not soaked in brine, each family has its own characteristics.
Today's Hainanese chicken rice has developed different forms, with different emphases. © culy.nl
In terms of dipping sauce, Hainan local use of green kumquat, that is, the kind of small green orange that can be found in major tea shops today, the aroma is more three-dimensional and complex than lemon or lime, with the yellow lantern pepper produced in Wanning, Hainan, it is a unique island enthusiasm. Unlike chicken rice in Singapore, Hainanese people's soy sauce with chicken is generally not paste-like. If you don't like to come with a dip sauce, you can also make your own, it is said that the locals say that it is mixed with chicken fat garlic soy sauce and a little soup, sour, spicy, salty and then self-matched.
Cai Lan described the scene in "A Study of HainanEse Chicken Rice": "A large amount of garlic with skin and ginger is fried in oil, and then a handful of green onions are rolled up, and the fragrant leaves called 'Balaan' by the Malays are stuffed into the belly of the chicken." Salt the outer skin of the chicken. Boil a large pot of water, roll it, add a spoonful of salt, roll it again, add it again, and see how salty it should be from experience. Put the chicken in the soup, blanch it for five minutes, scoop it up and cross the cold water river. The water boiled again, and then boiled. Three or four times, look at the size of the chicken, can not stick to the stereotype. Finally hang the chicken and air dry. There is a layer of chicken fat on top of the boiled chicken water, put it into the pot to fry the dried shallots, then put the rice in it and fry it, the fried rice is put into another pot to cook, and the water for cooking rice is also half with the soup that just boiled the chicken. Half of it is kept, plus cabbage and winter vegetables, to make a soup. When you eat it, it is drizzled with soy sauce, just white rice, and no chicken is already delicious in the world, and there is nowhere to find it."
Chicken fat is the soul of chicken rice, and it takes some effort to boil it. © Delicious unlimited company
Behind a simple single dish of chicken rice is countless complexities and trajectories of history.
Grassroots or advanced, and chicken or first rice, can be described as the Hainan chicken rice proposition left for diners.
"A good chicken is the key to determining Hainanese chicken rice", after Hainanese chicken rice came to China, it changed a lot of different practices. But in the process of localization, a common denominator gradually developed - people began to pursue the quality of chicken.
Smooth, firm, elastic teeth... Open the public review search Hainan chicken rice, you can see that the chickens in the business photos are more golden than one, and the color is even closer to the salt baked chicken.
Three yellow chicken, Qingyuan chicken, corn chicken, from free range to organic... In the choice of chickens, various stores have also begun to compete secretly. But it is true that the chicken that produces excellent chickens is fat and unremitting, and it is easier to precipitate the gel-like gel between the skin and meat during the cooking process, which is enough for people to focus on the yellow chicken.
Many stalls are hung with chicken for chicken rice, and there are usually white chopped chickens and roast chickens to choose from. © visitsingapore.com
The pursuit of chicken highlights the dietary preferences of the Chinese people from the side, meat precedes staple foods, and the taste, perception and source of ingredients can directly affect the consumption of diners.
In Singapore, a country with a very high price index and a cost to eat a haidilao, chicken rice is a grassroots existence like Lanzhou ramen.
Most of the stalls in Singapore are hung with chicken rice, and there is no shiny luster, and the skin is mostly white with red strips, rather than golden. There is no elaborate plating, if you want to take it away, the owner will directly put the rice and chicken together in waterproof paper to wrap it up for you, revealing an ancient simplicity.
"Chicken rice, rice is more important than chicken", after coming to Singapore, many locals heard a very different answer from the mouth of the country. When asked about her friends in Singapore, she replied, "White cut chicken is hard to eat and hard to eat, but the rice is fried and the ingredients are not good, which directly determines the basis of this meal."
Chicken rice, rice is more important than chicken. © sgfoodonfoot.com
Perhaps with a similar idea, Singaporeans shouted and shouted, so they reduced Hainanese chicken rice to chicken rice, and the accent fell on the word rice.
If you must delve into the reasons, it is actually because from the beginning of the immigration wave, laborers are accustomed to eating fast and walking fast, and the priority of filling their stomachs is higher than everything else, which not only has spawned the prosperity of local restaurants, but also has different expectations for cheap and easy-to-get "fast food" such as chicken rice.
One north and one south, chicken rice leaves China, and then returns to China with a new look, when bowls of chicken rice soaked with chicken soup and Southeast Asian spices can be immediately relieved, no matter how noble or low, and when another group of people appreciate the tender taste and tight skin of chicken, they complete an imagination of exotic cuisine.
Hawking said that he thought the most wonderful thing in science was the distant similarity, which was also applicable in the universal world. It is like a plate of chicken rice, which satisfies people's appetites in different ways in different lands.
Resources:
"Looking for the Origin of Hainan Chicken Rice" Lin Jincheng
"High Society Knowledge Competition" Shen Hongfei
"Island Yi Zhiluo" Wang Dayuan
"Research on Hainan Chicken Rice" Cai Lan
"Magic Capital Hainan Chicken Rice Research Report! Chicken tender oil rice fragrant, more delicious than Sanya's" Wu Qiong