Grilled Chicken with Sticky Rice Stuffing

This is a homey dish that would impress the heck outta your spouse/bf/gf/in laws/colleagues/spouse's colleagues/frenemies/enemies...well, just about everyone, and it's completely doable!

Thanks to Noobcook for posting the easy-to-follow recipe.
I had been dreaming chicken & sticky rice days and nights after I saw her beautiful bird, and finally, I did it, with a little tweaks here and there.

Do some stretching exercises, take a deep breath...

Ready?
The bird
You'll need:
- 1 small sized chicken (you can go bigger, but my oven can only fit smaller birds, around HK$30 ones)
Remove head, neck, feet, trim excess fat, clean thoroughly and pat dry.

Marinate
- Hoisin sauce, dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, white pepper, five spice powder
- 4 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 2 shallots, thinly sliced
- a few sprigs of spring onion, cut into 5 cm long pieces
- 5 cm ginger, sliced thinly
Rub marinate mix all over the bird, place garlic, shallot, spring onion and ginger including in the cavity and in between the meat and skin, refrigerate overnight.

Sing the bird a lullaby if you wish :)

Sticky Rice Stuffing

I soaked 2 cups of sticky rice, 1 cup of dried shiitake mushrooms overnight. Before cooking, drain rice and set aside. Drain and slice mushrooms, reserve the water.


For a little citrus touch, instead of lemon/lime (which I didn't have), I used 9 years old dried orange peel from sc's mom. Soak them in water while preparing other ingredients.


My stuffing also included chestnuts, chopped dried shiitake mushrooms, and the best bit? Chinese sausages (lap cheong), sliced thinly. I like to think that lap cheong is the sweeter, Chinese cousin of bacon.


Heat up a pan, throw lap cheong pieces to release its oil, add mushrooms and chestnuts. Add light soy sauce and dark soy sauce, toss everything around a little...then add sticky rice.


...and add a cup of chicken stock, and 1/3 cup of mushroom water (the one from soaking the mushroom)

Bring to boil, reduce heat to simmer, cover and cook for 20 minutes....

...and it would be really hard to say goodbye to this sticky deliciousness...really really hard, but try.

Stop eating the stuffing!
It has to go into the bird's ass.

Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Stuff sticky rice into the bird's cavity (I wanted to say ass), and add a bit of thinly sliced rehydrated dried orange peel in the cavity and in between the chicken's meat and skin too.


I gave my bird too much liposuction, I couldn't close it's ass! Arrgghhh! Please remember to leave some skin to allow your bird to seal the rice properly. Place chicken on a roasting pan, covered with foil, let it roast for 1 hour.


After an hour, uncover the bird, oh my!
But I want my bird's skin to be crispier, darker, tastier.
So I basted the skin with a mix of olive oil, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, dark soy sauce and some sugar.
Baste it good!
Roast it again uncovered until the skin turns deep-brown-beautiful.

You likey? You wanna go deeper?
If you really want it, and because it's the holidays, when I can be guilty and forget the health factor just a little bit...
Baste the bird again and roast it again until you get this...

A little burnt bits here and there...that's all I wanted.
Now my bird is all kinds of beautiful!

Sweet, sticky, savoury tasty skin.
Tender, moist, juicy meat.
Delicious stuffing bursting with flavors.
There was no way I could stop at one bowl. No-bloody-way!

But it's totally worth the leg numbing dance class I had to do after :p

Happy winter solstice festival everyone~
Get cooking.