Last week, I had the great pleasure of meeting tigerfish from teczcape when she came back to Singapore for a few days. Tigerfish recently published a cookbook, The Everything Rice Cooker Cookbook, and I was so happy to receive a signed copy from her. Prior to tigerfish’s cookbook, the only thing I know how to cook in the rice cooker is … rice! In this recipe, the rice cooker is successfully used to cook a hearty pot of Chinese chicken & daikon soup.
This is a nourishing soup with cooling & qi-balancing” properties. Daikon, like luo han guo (monk’s fruit), is known to be beneficial for soothing a sore throat. It is also great for cleansing (detoxification). With the rice cooker acting like a slow cooker, the chicken meat was so tender it was practically falling off the bones. This recipe can be easily adapted by whatever equipment you use to cook soup – may it be a slow cooker, a normal soup pot on the stove, or keeping the soup warm for long hours in a thermal pot.
About the cookbook: There are more than 300 rice cooker recipes in this collection. Now I know it’s not just rice you can cook in a rice cooker. You also don’t need a high-end rice cooker to cook the dishes. All the dishes, I was told, can be whipped up in a traditional and inexpensive “keep warm/cook” rice cooker. I think this book is perfect for those into one-pot cooking, and extremely useful for people who wish to expand their range of cooking with minimal appliances (imagine students living in hostels). The book brings out the versatility of one-pot cooking teaching you techniques such as steaming, stir-frying, stewing and braising, all in the rice cooker. Now I know that besides rice, I can also cook pasta, congee, seafood, desserts, curries, stews, vegetables and more.
The result is soup that has been deeply simmered with a rich taste – just like it has been slow cooked but in a much shorter time (thanks to the rice cooker).
Adapted from The Everything Rice Cooker Cookbook by Tay Hui Leng