Clay Pot Chicken Rice with 20 Days Old Pickled Daikon (Goodies from Kyoto, Japan)

Japanese makes really good pickles and its ancient capital Kyoto, is especially famous for a wide variety of light and refreshing tsukemono. Among all the pickles, these 20 days old pinkish daikon drew my attention -

Of course I had to bring some of these cute little tsukemono back. Usually small daikon is served as a whole or cut into strips. However, I think it would be quite delicious to serve with clay pot rice.

Clay pot chicken rice with 20 days old pickled daikon - 

Ingredients (3 to 4 portions)?

• 1 1/2 cups uncooked white rice (but I changed 1/2 cup to brown rice for the texture)
• 1 small pack maitake
• 1 small pack shimeji mushroom
• 1 deboned chicken leg
• 1/2 onion
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon mirin 
• Some scallion
• Some Japanese 20 days pickled daikon (or other types of Japanese light pickles)

Dashi/stock:

• 1 medium strip kombu (dried kelp)
• 6 cups water
• Bones from the deboned chicken leg

How?

Chop the chicken into large bite size pieces and marinate with 1 tablespoon of soy sauce and 1 tablespoon of mirin. This doesn't take long, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Pour 6 cups of water to a pot and add in the chicken bone. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 minutes. Turn off the heat and skim away any brown bits floating on top. 

Gently wipe the kombu clean but not removing the white powder, that's the fragrant umami essence. Soak the kombu inside the stock for 10 minutes. Drain well and sift if needed. This recipe doesn't need that much stock, simply freeze the leftover dashi for future use. 

Chop some pickled daikon into smaller cubes, another good alternative is yuzu daikon, the kind usually served at a sushi restaurant. Discard the scallion stem and finely chop the remaining. Peel and slice the onion. Hand-tear the mushrooms into smaller strips. 

Prepare a pan and sear the chicken, skin side down first. No need to drizzle oil. Once the skin fat has rendered and browned a little, add in the mushrooms and give it a quick stir. Add in onion slices and cook till translucent. Turn off the heat.

Take the clay pot and add in uncooked rice. Top with stir-fried ingredients including the juice. Pour 2 cups of stock and cover with lid but use only 1 1/2 cups of stock for a drier texture. Drier version yields some crunchy rice on the bottom too. Use medium high heat till boiling then lower to a light simmer for 22 to 24 minutes. After that, turn off the heat and keep the lid on for another 5 minutes.

If very uncertain about the cooking time, it's ok to open up the lid and quickly take a peek. The key is rather keeping the rice on the moist side than burning it.

Once ready, open up the lid, mix and fold the ingredients together with cooked rice. Top with chopped daikon and scallion before serving. 

You can also scoop some rice to the serving bowl and garnish with one cute little pickled daikon -

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• Quick fix but still kind of a self indulgence meal - simple Hawaiian poke bowl
• Light version: smoked salmon fried rice 煙燻鮭魚炒飯
• Self indulgence - SRF rib eye steak with daikon oroshi donburi
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• Festive Japanese food at home - colorful chirashi as easy as 1 2 3!