I don’t love chicken rice all that much as I eat it nearly daily during the work week. It’s easier, given my regular chicken rice stall shares space with the mixed rice stall (both run by brothers); this means I get my double portion of chicken breast with plenty of leafy greens. It’s a staple.
Of course, it doesn’t end there. I rarely eat on site, preferring to grab my lunch as takeaway. After a noontime workout at home (kettlebell swings and Turkish get-ups will give anyone a roaring appetite), I will plate my lunch… with a few additions.
Freshly cracked black pepper and a heaping spoonful of brilliant orange turmeric powder into an empty bowl. Then a generous drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Then the rice and chicken and greens, sometimes a braised hard boiled egg too, if I’m really craving extra protein.
And the pièce de résistance, an entire packet of natto, the gooey fermented beans topped with yellow mustard and taré seasoning.
Mix it all up and it’s divine. A monstrous bowl but then sometimes we are monsters, or aim to head that direction. (#BeastMode, amirite?)
Which is to say chicken rice isn’t sacred to me. Even when Hainanese chicken rice purists would insist on the steamed/boiled variety, I will always go for the roast chicken. The skin is more aromatic, less jellied. I’m not looking for aspic here.
Perhaps I just hadn’t found the right sort of chicken rice to worship. Perhaps where chicken rice is concerned, I’m a bit of a vampire; the blood thirst comes out after sunset and moonrise.
These days I will watch the clock. Once it’s past six or seven in the evening, my favourite kao mun gai stall will be up and running along Soi Ari, not far from the BTS station. Sometimes the temp worker will arrive first, squatting on the pavement outside the barbershop opposite, his tattoos gleaming under the garish neon light.
His employer, the kao mun gai maestro, is never in a hurry. Even after he reaches the stall, he takes his time to set up the stall, really a food cart. It’s meditative to watch him hang the steamed chickens and pile up pieces of fried chicken (it’s almost never roast chicken as the second option here in Thailand).
Meditative or a test of one’s patience. One learns to wait.
In the middle of the customised cart, a huge sunken vat. He lifts the lid and steam wafts out. The entire cauldron is filled with fluffy oil rice, every grain slick with chicken manna. It’s my turn. Today I’m starving (when am I never?) so I ask for a full portion of boiled chicken and a smaller one of fried chicken. And more rice than three people could conceivably finish. I will devour all that in one sitting.
Yes to the soup, some pieces of winter melon dancing in the broth after he has skimmed the surface. His assistant deftly twists rubber bands around tiny plastic sachets of chilli sauce; I skip these as I will be doing some tweaking of my own once back to our condo.
(A drizzle of sesame oil, lots of ground white pepper, and it’s perfect. No natto. Nothing sacrilegious, not for chicken rice this holy.)
I say “Kob khun krub” to them as I leave, still unused to the local shortening of “krub” to a less formal “kub”, and stroll slowly home, past many others still in search of their dinner in the shops and stalls along the street.
May they find a moonlit supper that sate their appetites and their souls too. Maybe they should just get kao mun gai like me; they won’t regret it.