Soy Sauce Chicken
Rating: 8/10 | mouth-watering chicken imposter
This was a dish that was never supposed to happen, let alone be concieved. Imagine:
The hands of the clock hold at midnight.
Soy sauce sluices down the drain.
Boiling water reaches the cabinets.
The clink of metal pans.
These events, in no particular order, characterised the evening ahead of my long week, rifled with exams. I had finished dinner, putting aside my steamed rice and spicy vegetable dish that one makes when they could not be bothered, when she approached me and reminded me of the half-eaten, rotting chicken carcass in the fridge. She had bought it from Metro for a killer deal she reminded me. Now it lay in my hands as my task to do something with it.
‘Let’s cut it up and turn it into fried rice, why don’t we?’
‘It would be a waste.’
‘Of what?’
And there it was—she spoke inquisitively but with a hint of authority that made one question the train of thoughts that had not even departed. Perhaps it was my competitive spirit or my blockheaded disposition, but I took her up on her challenge. I decided, in that moment, that the chicken carcass, clearly not amused by my musings, would be put to good use. Earlier, I found a simple, rice-cooker dish that took no more than 30 minutes. The perfect amount of time to act as if the dish—had it turned out amazing—was an orchestrated and planned affair, whereas if it became untouchable, due to the little effort I had put it. I set out to make soy sauce chicken, ingredients: chicken, soy sauce, and green onion. The quintessential Chinese ingredients. No cleanup either, so I took it as a success from the outset. Filling the kettle with water and letting it boil, I poured it over the skin of the chicken as it tensed up.
‘Are you sure this will work?’
‘Mmmm.’
The mixture of soy sauce, some oil, and other seasonings was lathered into the skin of the chicken as I prepared the rice cooker from that one shelf too high for her to reach, yet just low enough for to have plausible deniability when asking me for help. It worked for us anyway, and I wasn’t about to change the little use I was around the house. Pouring the soy sauce mixture in, I laid the chicken down into the cooker to let steam, went back to the study, and relaxed.
