Hainanese Chicken Rice

This is a simple and delicate dish, not complicated but requires great patience and care when cooking.
It is basically a poached chicken dish and rice, sounds easy enough, how hard can it be right? wrong.
It needs the right amount of seasoning/flavouring and poached just long enough....oh and a good chicken! preferably an organic medium sized chicken.

Ingredients needed (serves 4):
1 whole (organic) chicken
1 large fresh ginger root, sliced
5 stalks of scallions/green onions
2 schallots
5-6 garlic cloves peeled
Coriander for garnishing
Light soy sauce
Shoaxingwine/ chinese cooking sherry
Sesame oil
1-2 tbsp coarse salt
cooking oil
Salt to taste
2 cups rice
Instructions:

To cook chicken

1. Clean a whole chicken. Cut excess fat and skin and put aside for later.
2. Rub coarse salt thoroughly on chicken skin. This will help exfoliate the skin surface,and helps a smooth silky appearance on chicken when cooked.
3. Clean inside of chicken and rub 1/2 teaspoon of salt on the inside surface. Also rub a dash of shaoxing, soy sauce and sesame oil inside.
4. Slice 2x2inch ginger root (no need for peeling) and stuff in chicken cavity along with garlic cloves and 3 stalks of scallions (chopped in half).
5. Put a large pot of water to boil and turn heat down and place chicken into pot, fully submerged, with breast side down. let chicken simmer and cook for 50 minutes on low heat. (do not let water boil as it might tear the chicken skin).
6. Then to keep skin crisp, carefully remove chicken from pot and immediately place into a large bowl of iced water.
7. Retain pot of water chicken was boiled in for broth/soup

To cook rice

1. Wash rice and rinse twice. drain.
2. Heat pan with a table spoon of cooking oil and render fat from excess chicken skin from earlier. oan fry 2 thinly sliced schallots then add in rice, half tsp of salt. Sitr fry rice grains for about a minute.
3. Transfer ingredients in pan into rice pot. Add 4 cups of chicken broth and 1 inch knob of ginger and add pandan (screwpine) leaves to boil - optional. 
4. When rice is cooked, fluff rice with a fork. 

To serve

1.  Use remaining chicken broth as soup-side dish by adding soup lettuce, sliced spring onion and a few dashes of white pepper.
2. For condiments, the dish is best served with a ginger and chilli sauce. For best results, blitz ginger in a mixer/blender and pan fry with a tbsp vegetable oil and half tsp salt. As for chilli sauce, blitz 2 fresh chillies, a tbsp of lime juice, 1 garlic clove, and 1/4 tsp salt and sugar.
3. To serve complete dish, garnish with some chopped spring onions and coriander leaves. Then pour 2 tablespoon of the hot chicken broth, 2 tbsp light soy sauce, 1 tbsp sesame oil onto chicken. Thinly sliced cucumber would complement the dish perfectly.

Prep Time : 30 min
Cooking Time : 1.5 hrs
Difficulty Level : easy