Rice cooker KFC rice

Some time ago, I discovered that some people make chicken rice with leftover KFC chicken in a rice cooker.

A few days ago, we received a KFC lunch in the office. It was a set of three pieces of chicken, and one small whipped potato. (no coleslaw…most likely because they might spoil)

There were two pieces of Hot & Spicy and one Original Recipe in my box. Since the chicken rice is supposed to be made with Original Recipe chicken, I ate up the two other pieces and kept this piece.

The recipe is extremely simple: Cook your rice together with the chicken, some soy sauce, and some chicken stock in the rice cooker. When it is done, shred the chicken and mix it into the rice. That’s it!

I omitted the chicken stock but added a clove of garlic. (Some online recipes/reviews say that it would taste better with more personalized seasonings) I thought of even adding some ginger, but decided to try the more “original” taste before I tweak it further.

Here’s how it looked like when cooked:

I placed the chicken in a way that more of it touched the rice.

And after shredding the chicken:

I think that the chicken wasn’t as soft as it should be after cooking. Maybe because this chicken part cannot get submerged properly in the cooking liquid. If I make it again, I would probably shred the chicken first, so that the pieces (including skin) can properly flavour the rice while it is cooking.

In the end, my dish felt like it was just some flavoured rice mixed with reheated KFC chicken. Easier than cooking the rice and heating up the chicken separately, I suppose? :P

A sucking grass

Do you know what a drinking straw is called in Hokkien? Well, I think I just learned it today.

I was buying some sugarcane juice, and as the seller handed me the plastic bag, she asked me whether I wanted something. I had no idea what the “something” meant, but knowing that there are not that many things that can be given to me with sugarcane juice, I figured out that she meant a drinking straw and could respond to her question.

So what was the word that she used? It was “sok chao”. Knowing that “sok” means “suck”, and “chao” means “grass”, it did help with my interpretation of the question!

It is also actually rather similar to how “straw” in English also means the “hay” kind of straw, and in French it is the same with the word “paille”. They were essentially a type of grass to begin with! I remember that when we learned the word “paille”, our teacher told us that in the past, people used actual straw (not the plastic ones but the dried grass) to suck up drinks!

Words in a forest

Can you find the word amongst the words?

Because the theme for the week is words (in plural), here's a whole forest of it!

Indicator of power

When there's a light, you know there is power!

Especially on a computer mouse. :)

Haha suddenly this light makes me think of Ultraman...

A little taste of heaven

Last week's photo theme was heaven.

Doughnuts aren't exactly what I would call heaven, but I guess it's the closest I've been all week...

Krispy Kreme had just opened in Queensbay, and there was a promotion on Foodpanda (that Snorlax told me about) which led to me ordering a box of assorted premium doughnuts.

In general, they were pretty good. I liked the fluffiness of the doughnuts. It's a pity they gave me two of the same kind...they must have run out of some flavours.

As for why this pretty box of six is not my Photo Friday photo, it's because it was taken before I saw the photo theme! I take quite a lot of liberties with this photo challenge, but my basic rules are that I must take the photo specially for this theme (I can't go and pick an old photo that fits the theme perfectly), and within the week (at latest on the following Friday when the next theme arrives)

Snorlax said that the kit-kat doughnut did not have much filling, so I was surprised that mine had so much...and I snapped this photo to show him. He said his had less. Actually I would have preferred a little less filling; this was a bit too much!

A curious one

As I was finishing off my pizza, I spotted this tiny note on the box.

"You're a curious one. I like you."

Yep, I'm a curious one...and now I'm curious about whether this note has been on all the previous boxes!

Scientist quiz

Some time ago, I created a mini-game for a newsletter at work. It was supposed to be like those cereal-box games; I placed four scientists’ photos together with four meeting room numbers (our meeting rooms are named after scientists), with one simple instruction: Match!

Not sure whether anyone actually played it, but it was in any case a space-filler.

Then yesterday I watched an episode of Running Man (episode 569 to be precise), and was surprised to see one of the photos I had used, being used in their quiz. In their case, they were supposed to guess the name of the person.

Sad to say, I failed to identify the scientist. :P (I had forgotten who was who a few moments after selecting the photos to use from Google!)

But those Koreans are pretty amazing…a number of them actually said that the person was clearly Thomas Edison. When they learn about scientists in school, do they actually make a point of learning their faces too? We only care about the names…

Grow, grass, grow!

Because this week's theme is grow... it made me specially notice this patch of grass (or weeds? :P ) that has completely taken over the square around this roadside tree.

They definitely grew well, huh?

Self-heating hotpot

Have you heard of self-heating hotpot? I recently tried two kinds, making use of Shopee’s promotions (otherwise they are kind of expensive…). I bought two different brands, thinking that if the first one doesn’t taste good, it may be just because that brand/flavour doesn’t suit me.

One was spicy crayfish, while the other one was beef ham (not sure why they call it “ham”; it may be a bad translation)

I tried the crayfish one first.

Plenty of separate packets inside, including a pair of chopsticks!
The two packets on the bottom-right are both crayfish. The blue pack is the veggies/potatoes, while the other two packs are easily recognizable as the "noodles" and the chilli.

The boxes - we are to put the heating pack into the outer box, pour water (just room temperature water, not hot water) on it for it to start releasing heat.

Dumped everything into the inner pot. (except the chilli paste)

Added the chilli paste, but not all of it...I know it's gonna be spicy!

Then we add drinking water to the inner pot, and start heating!

Heating in progress. (15 minutes)

Done!

Then we stir and eat...

I actually felt that I did not put enough water on the heating pack. After the 15 minutes, I felt that the soup didn't seem hot enough, so I took out the inner pot, added more water to the outer pot, and let it continue heating for a while more... not sure whether it made any difference in the end.

When I took out the inner pot to add water to the heating pack, I placed it on a heat pad...and it was so hot it made my heat pad warp. :O

See that the part on the right became thicker?

So…how did it taste? Basically like mala soup… the crayfish were so tiny that it was pretty much impossible to get any meat after taking the shell off. So I was sucking the shells instead… 

I definitely didn’t expect such tiny crayfish…I thought they would give just one or two, but maybe two or three times this size? :P

Moving on to the beef hotpot...

This one has better illustrations, so I'm attaching the instructions.

Translated with Google Lens

Again, all the packets... And they have chopsticks too, really something we can have on the go, with just water. I won't say what each packet is...you can figure it out yourself with the next photo.

There's quite a decent amount of beef. Easily broken apart...which also means it's very tender, huh... :P
The dry noodles (same as the other hotpot) are at the bottom...I just realized that they are totally hidden by the other ingredients!
(I broke the sausage while trying to get it out of the packet. Oops...)

Again, adding the chilli but not all of it.

Heating it up!

This time, I put more water in the bottom compartment. The bubbling was really more intense...though I am not sure whether it's because of the water or because of the product brand. Here's a video:

And then it's done!

There was a little overflowing..

This one tasted a bit better...maybe because of the beef? But it was difficult trying to get all the tiny pieces of beef. The sausage was awful though, it was simply mushy (can't expect too much from this kind of sausage...) Overall the hotpot is not good enough for me to buy again. :P

While eating, I felt like the bowl was extremely shallow...and after pouring away the soup, I realized why:

The heat pack had expanded a lot!

If you want shadows...

I will give you shadows!

Are four shadows enough?

I'm just rather disappointed that I couldn't get the shadows to be darker...