Kao man gai (Thai style chicken rice)

Kao man gai, a dish with three important components and for this version I made, a Thai one, those components are the soup, the rice and the chicken. 

The soup:
From the internet recipe I found, the soup requires only a handful of ingredients; chicken bones, salt, See ew kao (light soy sauce) and some corianders. I only have a couple of chicken wings and two chicken thigh fillets so I used those. Reserve some bits of chicken skin (one tablespoon when chopped or a little more) from the thigh fillets for the rice.

To make the soup, I added chicken wings first and boil them for approx. 10 mins before adding the chicken fillets. After the chicken fillets were cooked, I took them out and set them aside for serving. When it come to how to boiling, I have learnt to boil the soup on very low heat. This is crucial in order to keep the soup clear not cloudy which is the result I was aiming for. Keep fishing out the gunk on the surface while boiling it to keep the soup as clear as possible. Keep the soup pot on low heat until the chicken wings are cooked through.

The rice: 
Cut out some chicken skin from the chicken fillets. Peel two cloves of garlic and smash them lightly for the aroma to come out. Prepare either one teaspoon of chopped ginger or like me, use some readily available grated ginger (mine came in a tube).

In a low heat pan, add about one and half tablespoon of cooking oil then add the chopped chicken skin, the smashed garlic cloves and the grated ginger. Once the oil starts sizzling, add the uncooked rice to the pan and stir well to combine. Take out the garlic before adding the soup. I used the soup to cook two cups of white rice and cook the riceas normal as I would white rice in a rice cooker. I didn`t have any Thai jasmine rice on hand so I just used my staple Japanese white rice.

The chicken:
Cut the cooked chicken fillets into manageable pieces before serving. Garnish with thinly sliced cucumbers and coriander.

The dishing up part is up to you. Either place the rice and the chicken side by side then add some cucumbers and corianders or if you are sharing the dish, dishing up my way; chicken and rice on different plates work as well too.

Notes: I didn`t go extra mile to make my own dipping sauce and used a bottled one bought from the Asian store. 

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