Yeah, I know it seems like an oxymoron. Vegetarian chicken rice? You’re not one of those tofurkey meat-bashing freaks are you?
Well no, I’m vegetarian because I just prefer not to eat meat. That and I had an eating disorder when I was 14, and I became vegetarian as a socially acceptable way to restrict my kilojoule intake. I stayed vegetarian because I prefer the lifestyle. Of course, nowadays, my diet includes high-fat, high-sodium but damn tasty and full-of-vegetables-dishes. Like this one.
The recipe for this is pretty lazy simple. Just get a box of Hainanese Chicken Rice pastes from ye good ole asian grocery store, and make sure they include sauces for the rice, chicken, chilli, dark soy and ginger oil (although if you have chili pastes etc. that you prefer, use them instead).
Chuck the rice + paste into the rice cooker, grab your chicken (or in my case, vegetarian chicken from the asian grocery store) and boil it in the soup. Slice up some cucumbers and tomatoes and take the sauces out of the packets. The ginger oil in my packet was pretty disappointing – nowhere near as good as the real thing (which can be made by heating up minced ginger in a bit of oil (just to warm it) with a bunch of salt).
I love vegetables, so I fried up some bok choy with crushed garlic, soy sauce and kecap manis (a type of sweet dark soy sauce).
VOILA. DIN DIN.