Feels like home

Passport & Plate - Arroz Caldo (Filipino Chicken and Rice Soup)

Philippines | Saturday, March 7, 2015 | 4 photos

Ingredients
grapeseed oil
1 lb chicken thighs or drumsticks
4 large shallots, thinly sliced
2 tbsp. peeled and minced ginger
9 cloves garlic, minced
2 c. uncooked white rice
1 tbsp. fish sauce
5 c. chicken stock
calamansi or limes
scallions for garnish
salt and pepper

 

How to prepare this recipe
Recipe Notes:
This is typically a soupy dish, but I personally I prefer it more like a porridge. Feel free loosen the rice with a bit more stock or hot water to your liking. I find that a microplane is a great way to mince ginger. This recipe provides for just a kiss of the salty/sour taste of fish sauce – add more if you like yours more pungent. Calamansi is a citrus fruit used in Filipino cooking, but if you can’t find it, limes work well in its place.

Serves 6-8

1. Heat a couple glugs of grapeseed oil in a small skillet over medium heat and cook ½ of the minced garlic, stirring frequently, until golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.

2. Salt and pepper chicken. In a large Dutch oven heat a ¼ c. of grapeseed oil over medium heat and brown chicken, skin side down. Flip chicken over and add onions. Once other side of chicken is browned, add the ginger and garlic and let cook for 1 minute. Add rice and fish sauce and cook for another minute.

3. Add chicken stock, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cover and cook until rice is tender, about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. (Optional Step) Once rice is cooked, remove chicken, de-bone and shred. Return meat to pot and stir into the rice.

5. Stir in a squeeze a calamansi or lime.

Serve in a bowl and garnish with fried garlic, scallions, a quartered calamansi or lime, and a couple turns of freshly ground pepper.

 

The story behind this recipe
As with most comfort foods, this dish takes me back my childhood. Specifically, to whenever I stayed home from grade school, sick with a fever or the flu. The heater is on, and I’m buried up to my neck under a fleece blanket on the couch. Mister Rogers or the Brady Bunch is on TV, and I can smell the cooking rice and chicken. Mom’s slippers make a soft sliding sound on the kitchen floor, letting me know her whereabouts. She brings a small, steamy bowl of the rice porridge, and I prop myself up on a pillow, ready to slurp up the warm, chewy rice. One spoonful later, it’s as if my mom put a hot, fresh-out-of-the-dryer blanket on me.

In my late 20s I moved from the Bay Area to New York City, where I knew just one person. It’s hard to establish a new circle of friends later in life, and for much of that first year, surrounded 8 million people, I felt incredibly alone and homesick. I don’t believe I realized it then, but looking back at the number of times I made Arroz Caldo that year, I was trying to capture a piece of home in a then-strange and cold place.

I now make this for my boyfriend when he’s not feeling well, hoping he feels the same soothing warmth I did as a kid (and still feel now as an adult).