A Fruitful Friday

As the day after National Day (9th Aug, Thur) was a school holiday, all primary, secondary and junior college students and teachers in Singapore enjoyed a long weekend.

I had spent my Friday well as many items on my ‘to do list’ were completed. Firstly, after sending darling dearest to work, I hung out at his workplace’s air-conditioned cafeteria to mark assignments from 2 classes. Secondly, I drove to Tampines Mall to buy Natasha’s birthday present and buy ingredients for dinner. Thirdly, the house floors were swept and mopped till sparkling clean. Fourthly, I watched 2 episodes of ‘State of the Planet’ documentary DVD filmed by BBC with my favourite David Attenborough as narrator. Lastly, I tried out a new dish ‘Chicken Baked Rice’ using a recipe I found on the internet. The last one being most satisfactory as darling dearest went *thumbs up*

I’ve always enjoyed Swenson’s baked rice dishes – they are delicious and often give me the goody warm feeling of being just filled. As it has been sometime since I tried on a new recipe, I thought of being adventurous again. If the cooking turns out yucky, we can always swing by the nearby coffee shop to ‘ta bao’ (take-away) dinner.

Here’s the online recipe (with my modifications). Pretty easy I’ll say.

Chicken Baked Rice

INGREDIENTS:

• 300g chicken breast meat (sliced thinly and then into chunks)
• 1 can (290g) cream of mushroom soup (Campbell’s)
• 1 can (290g) fresh milk (use the emptied Campbell’s can for measurement)
• 1 tray of fresh button or mixed mushrooms (sliced)
• 3/4 cup uncooked long-grain white rice (rinsed)
• Finely chopped garlic (1 big clove / 2 small cloves) or 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 small onion (cubed)
• 1 small carrot (cubed)
• 1 small capsicum (cubed)
• 1 sachet dry onion soup mix (I used Erin’s cream of vegetable mix)
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• A dash of ground black pepper (optional)
• 5 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese (quantity variable depending on individual’s preference)

PREPARATION:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Wash chicken breasts and pat dry; set aside.
2. Combine cream of mushroom soup with fresh milk and stir well to remove lumps. Set aside 1/2 cup of mixture for later.
3. Mix remaining soup mixture with chopped garlic, chopped onion, ½ pack of the dry onion soup mix and rice. Optional: sprinkle some ground black pepper.
4. Mix well and pour into a baking dish. (Can be a casserole dish or pyrex glass dish. Mine’s a round, 8″ diameter by 2″ depth pyrex glass dish).
5. Place carrots and capsicum on rice mixture followed by chicken pieces.
   Combine reserved soup mixture with mushrooms. Spread over chicken.
6. Sprinkle with remaining dry onion soup mix, thyme, and Parmesan cheese.
7. Cover tightly with aluminium foil and bake in a 180°C oven for 1 hour.
8. Remove foil and continue baking for 15 to 20 minutes longer, or until chicken is tender and liquid is absorbed. If the dish still looks watery, you may want to increase temperature to 190 or 200°C to speed up the evaporation. Do sample from the centre of the dish to check whether rice has soaked up the soup mixture.

Serves 4. (Yang and I finished the entire dish without any difficulty, hee hee.)