Hainan Chicken Rice Might Just Be My Favorite Chicken Dish
I have several gotta-cook-'em-all dishes, and they're all chicken-and-rice-based: chicken adobo, Japanese-style chicken curry and, my current muse, Hainan chicken rice. Unlike adobo or curry, which essentially simmer away after a meager amount of prep, Hainan chicken rice can involve a lot of steps. None of them are difficult, but they can eat up an afternoon, making it the perfect thing for a winter weekend.
The yield is fantastic: perfect, succulent chicken that's had an aromatic soak with ginger, scallions and garlic; soothing chicken soup; rice that's been cooked in some of said soup with pandan leaves; and a sparkly ginger-scallion sauce. Hainan chicken rice is maybe my favorite chicken dish — nourishing but not heavy, comforting but not cloying. And the elements branch out into helpful leftovers. The rice becomes fried rice, of course; the chicken goes into any number of applications; the soup is stock for stew (or curry!); and the ginger-scallion sauce is tossed with noodles for a stellar lunch.
All of which is to say: I'm very excited to add Kevin Pang's recipe to my collection.
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Before we move on, I want to call out Genevieve Ko's ginger scallion chicken and rice and Sue Li's chicken and rice with scallion-ginger sauce as excellent Hainan chicken rice shortcuts. They both feature gently cooked chicken with fragrant rice and a ginger-scallion situation, but with total cook times that wouldn't feel insane on a Wednesday.
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an hour ago
US Osprey makes emergency landing in Japan, officials say
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Los Angeles Times
6 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Americans may aspire to single-family homes, but in South Korea, apartments are king
SEOUL — For many Americans, the apartment where 29-year-old IT specialist Lee Chang-hee lives might be the stuff of nightmares. Located just outside the capital of Seoul, the building isn't very tall — just 16 stories — by South Korean standards, but the complex consists of 36 separate structures, which are nearly identical except for the building number displayed on their sides. The 2,000-plus units come in the same standardized dimensions found everywhere in the country (Lee lives in a '84C,' which has 84 square meters, or about 900 square feet, of floor space) and offer, in some ways, a ready-made life. The amenities scattered throughout the campus include a rock garden with a fake waterfall, a playground, a gym, an administration office, a senior center and a 'moms cafe.' But this, for the most part, is South Korea's middle-class dream of home ownership — its version of a house with the white picket fence. 'The bigger the apartment complex, the better the surrounding infrastructure, like public transportation, schools, hospitals, grocery stories, parks and so on,' Lee said. 'I like how easy it is to communicate with the neighbors in the complex because there's a well-run online community.' Most in the country would agree: Today, 64% of South Korean households live in such multifamily housing, the majority of them in apartments with five or more stories. Such a reality seems unimaginable in cities like Los Angeles, which has limited or prohibited the construction of dense housing in single-family zones. 'Los Angeles is often seen as an endless tableau of individual houses, each with their own yard and garden,' Max Podemski, an L.A.-based urban planner, wrote in The Times last year. 'Apartment buildings are anathema to the city's ethos.' In recent years, the price of that ethos has become increasingly apparent in the form of a severe housing shortage. In the city of Los Angeles, where nearly 75% of all residential land is zoned for stand-alone single-family homes, rents have been in a seemingly endless ascent, contributing to one of the worst homelessness crises in the country. As a remedy, the state of California has ordered the construction of more than 450,000 new housing units by 2029. The plan will almost certainly require the building of some form of apartment-style housing, but construction has lagged amid fierce resistance. Sixty years ago, South Korea stood at a similar crossroads. But the series of urban housing policies it implemented led to the primacy of the apartment, and in doing so, transformed South Korean notions of housing over the course of a single generation. The results of that program have been mixed. But in one important respect, at least, it has been successful: Seoul, which is half the size of the city of L.A., is home to a population of 9.6 million — compared with the estimated 3.3 million people who live here. For Lee, the trade-off is a worthwhile one. In an ideal world, she would have a garage for the sort of garage sales she's admired in American movies. 'But South Korea is a small country,' she said. 'It is necessary to use space as efficiently as possible.' Apartments, in her view, have spared her from the miseries of suburban housing. Restaurants and stores are close by. Easy access to public transportation means she doesn't need a car to get everywhere. 'Maybe it's because of my Korean need to have everything done quickly, but I think it'd be uncomfortable to live somewhere that doesn't have these things within reach at all times,' she said. 'I like to go out at night; I think it would be boring to have all the lights go off at 9 p.m.' *** Apartments first began appearing in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, as part of a government response to a housing crisis in the nation's capital — a byproduct of the era's rapid industrialization and subsequent urban population boom. In the 1960s, single-family detached dwellings made up around 95% of homes in the country. But over the following decade, as rural migrants flooded Seoul in search of factory work, doubling the population from 2.4 to 5.5 million, many in this new urban working class found themselves without homes. As a result, many of them settled in shantytowns on the city's outskirts, living in makeshift sheet-metal homes. The authoritarian government at the time, led by a former army general named Park Chung-hee, declared apartments to be the solution and embarked on a building spree that would continue under subsequent administrations. Eased height restrictions and incentives for construction companies helped add between 20,000 to 100,000 new apartment units every year. They were pushed by political leaders in South Korea as a high-tech modernist paradise, soon making them the most desirable form of housing for the middle and upper classes. Known as apateu, which specifically refers to a high-rise apartment building built as part of a larger complex — as distinct from lower stand-alone buildings — they symbolized Western cachet and upward social mobility. 'Around the late 1990s and early 2000s, almost every big-name celebrity at the time appeared in apartment commercials,' recalled Jung Heon-mok, an anthropologist at the Academy of Korean Studies who has studied the history of South Korean apartments. 'But the biggest reason that apartments proliferated as they did was because they were done at scale, in complexes of five buildings or more.' Essential to the modern apateu are the amenities — such as on-site kindergartens or convenience stores — that allow them to function like miniature towns. This has also turned them into branded commodities and class signifiers, built by construction conglomerates like Samsung, and taking on names like 'castle' or 'palace.' (One of the first such branded apartment complexes was Trump Tower, a luxury development built in Seoul in the late 1990s by a construction firm that licensed the name of Donald Trump.) All of this has made the detached single-family home, for the most part, obsolete. In Seoul, such homes now make up just 10% of the housing stock. Among many younger South Koreans like Lee, they are associated with retirement in the countryside, or, as she puts it: for 'grilling in the garden for your grandkids.' *** This model has not been without problems. There are the usual issues that come with dense housing. In buildings with poor soundproofing, 'inter-floor noise' between units is such a universal scourge that the government runs a noise-related dispute resolution center while discouraging people from angrily confronting their neighbors, a situation that occasionally escalates into headline-making violence. Some apartment buildings have proved to be too much even for a country accustomed to unsentimentally efficient forms of housing. One 19-story, 4,635-unit complex built by a big-name apartment brand in one of the wealthiest areas of Seoul looks so oppressive that it has become a curiosity, mocked by some as a prison or chicken coop. The sheer number of apartments has prompted criticism of Seoul's skyline as sterile and ugly. South Koreans have described its uniform, rectangular columns as 'matchboxes.' And despite the aspirations attached to them, there is also a wariness about a culture where homes are built in such disposable, assembly line-like fashion. Many people here are increasingly questioning how this form of housing, with its nearly identical layouts, has shaped the disposition of contemporary South Korean society, often criticized by its own members as overly homogenized and lockstep. 'I'm concerned that apartments have made South Koreans' lifestyles too similar,' said Maing Pil-soo, an architect and urban planning professor at Seoul National University. 'And with similar lifestyles, you end up with a similar way of thinking. Much like the cityscape itself, everything becomes flattened and uniform.' Jung, the anthropologist, believes South Korea's apartment complexes, with their promise of an atomized, frictionless life, have eroded the more expansive social bonds that defined traditional society — like those that extended across entire villages — making its inhabitants more individualistic and insular. 'At the end of the day, apartments here are undoubtedly extremely convenient — that's why they became so popular,' he said. 'But part of that convenience is because they insulate you from the concerns of the wider world. Once you're inside your complex and in your home, you don't have to pay attention to your neighbors or their issues.' Still, Jung says this uniformity isn't all bad. It is what made them such easily scalable solutions to the housing crisis of decades past. It is also, in some ways, an equalizing force. 'I think apartments are partly why certain types of social inequalities you see in the U.S. are comparatively less severe in South Korea,' he said. Though many branded apartment complexes now resemble gated communities with exclusionary homeowner associations, Jung points out that on the whole, the dominance of multifamily housing has inadvertently encouraged more social mixing between classes, a physical closeness that creates the sense that everyone is inhabiting the same broader space. Even Seoul's wealthiest neighborhoods feel, to an extent that is hard to see in many American cities, porous and accessible. Wealthier often means having a nicer apartment, but an apartment all the same, existing in the same environs as those in a different price range. 'And even though we occasionally use disparaging terms like 'chicken coop' to describe them, once you actually step inside one of those apartments, they don't feel like that at all,' Jung said. 'They really are quite comfortable and nice.' *** None of this, however, has been able to stave off Seoul's own present-day housing affordability crisis. The capital has one of the most expensive apartment prices in the world on a price-per-square-meter basis, ranking fourth after Hong Kong, Zurich and Singapore, and ahead of major U.S. cities like New York or San Francisco, according to a report published last month by Deutsche Bank. One especially brutal stretch recently saw apartment prices in Seoul double in four years. Part of the reason for this is that apartments, with their standardized dimensions, have effectively become interchangeable financial commodities: An apartment in Seoul is seen as a much more surefire bet than any stock, leading to intense real estate investment and speculation that has driven up home prices. 'Buying an apartment here isn't just buying an apartment. The equivalent in the U.S. would be like buying an ideal single-family home with a garage in the U.S., except that it comes with a bunch of NVIDIA shares,' said Chae Sang-wook, an independent real estate analyst. 'In South Korea, people invest in apateu for capital gains, not cash flow from rent.' Some experts predict that, as the country enters another era of demographic upheaval, the dominance of apartments will someday be no more. If births continue to fall as dramatically as they have done in recent years, South Koreans may no longer need such dense housing. The ongoing rise of single-person households, too, may chip away at a form of housing built to hold four-person nuclear families. But Chae is skeptical that this will happen anytime soon. He points out that South Koreans don't even like to assemble their own furniture, let alone fix their own cars — all downstream effects of ubiquitous apartment living. 'For now, there is no alternative other than this,' he said. 'As a South Korean, you don't have the luxury of choosing.'
New York Times
a day ago
- New York Times
My Neighbors Stared. I Cut My Lawn With a Scythe Anyway.
Finally, after months of fiddling and frustration, my scythe was actually cutting something. The massive blade on this ancient mowing tool sliced through row after row of overgrown weeds with nice, easy swings. And it was quieter and worked faster than a modern-day string trimmer. Up to this point, I'd been hacking and grunting my way around the yard. I'd heard that scything could be relaxing, even meditative, but all I'd done was curse and sweat, and repress the mild embarrassment I felt when the neighbors stared. Who would enjoy this? Maybe struggle and self-denial were the point, and inner peace would blossom from the pain of living like a medieval peasant. But social media videos from scything celebrities including Slåttergubben and Scythe Dad made it look so smooth and productive — a healthy workout, for sure, though nothing like the punishment I'd been inflicting on my back and arms. So I sank another $100 into yet another piece of gear, dedicated another hour to learning yet another ancient technique, and took one last crack at this goofy experiment. Here was the payoff. The flow state I'd been promised was finally setting in. Then an old SUV rumbled up, and the driver called out, 'Wow, a real-life grim reaper. Nice scythe, kid.' Transcendent. Your neighbors will stare, but a scythe is a beautiful, meditative tool. If used correctly, it's very effective at cutting grass or an overgrown area. $197 from Lee Valley Tools For a European-style scythe (like the one we recommend), you'll need to shape the blade's edge before you can really sharpen it. This peening jig is the easiest way to do that. Once the blade was properly sharpened, my scythe made quick work of the overgrowth. A neighbor even stopped to show his appreciation. Liam McCabe and Aubrey Patti/NYT Wirecutter My quest had been inspired by Wirecutter's guide to string trimmers, into which my colleague Doug Mahoney snuck a scythe recommendation. He called it a 'beautiful, meditative tool' for those who are 'constantly looking for a 'different way,' and don't mind being seen as a little odd.' I definitely got my neighbors' attention — some stared, others pretended not to see me, and a few seemed concerned. But there were also people who struck up friendlier conversations and shared their own scything stories. The guy in the SUV told me about the one time he'd used a scythe. Another neighbor talked about watching her Central European grandfather swing a scythe around the garden — even after the Soviet Union had dissolved and lawnmowers became easier to find. Your neighbors will stare, but a scythe is a beautiful, meditative tool. If used correctly, it's very effective at cutting grass or an overgrown area. $197 from Lee Valley Tools As far as actually cutting the grass? Occasionally I bludgeoned the tips off of some leaf blades, but mostly I huffed and puffed without much to show for it. A couple times I convinced myself that I was working more efficiently due to a small adjustment I'd made to my scything stance or the angle of the blade. But that was wishful thinking. After a few weeks, I still hadn't gotten the hang of it, and my front yard was becoming an eyesore. I didn't want to give the neighbors too much to talk about, so I went back to managing it with my mower and string trimmer. Time away from the mower gave me a renewed appreciation for how fast and neat it is to use one. A lawn mower is louder than the scythe, but my front yard sits next to a busy state road, and the traffic is louder than most yard equipment anyway. My mower also runs on batteries, so to the extent that I care about minimizing its impact on the local environment, I'm perfectly comfortable with that setup. As for the string trimmer, meh: It's slow and uncomfortable, and it makes a mess. But it does the job where the mower can't. Still, I'd already spent almost $200 on the scythe setup, and at least it was decent exercise. So I resolved not to give up entirely, and I let my backyard grow into a wild scything laboratory while I tried to figure things out. Some successful scythers suggest that the quickest way to pick up all of the necessary skills is to attend a workshop. But I couldn't find any within driving distance of my house. It was only after I turned to another primordial technology — printed books at a public library — that I finally figured out my problem: I'd never properly sharpened the blade. Scythe Dad — or Sebastian Burke, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania — told me that he'd gotten into scything about a year ago, basically the same way that I did. 'It started as sort of a joke with a friend,' he said. In Burke's viral scything TikToks (filmed and posted by his wife, Lyndsey), each smooth swing of the scythe completely clears a neat semi-circle of grass, so it almost looks like it's lying down and taking a nap. A key difference between us is that Burke spent hundreds of dollars and put in hours of research and sweat equity over several months in order to learn how to sharpen his scythe. I, on the other hand, had tried to save a few bucks. Why buy some obscure sharpening tool — useful only for scythe blades — until I figured out whether I enjoyed scything in the first place? Scythe blades come in a wide range of sizes. I chose a 30-inch blade, which is a good length for slicing light grass and thicker weeds alike. The entire kit weighs only a couple of pounds. Liam McCabe/NYT Wirecutter But that's not how it works. If you're scything, you're also sharpening. European-style blades, like the one I bought, usually need to be 'peened' first. Peening is the process of hammering the business end of the blade's malleable steel into a fine edge. So as much as I tried to hone the fresh factory edge with a whetstone (and later a bastard file), it remained hopelessly dull. For a European-style scythe (like the one we recommend), you'll need to shape the blade's edge before you can really sharpen it. This peening jig is the easiest way to do that. If you don't commit to buying a full set of peening and sharpening gear on day one, and then practice how to use it — essentially an entire hobby on its own — then scything is a waste of time. There's no dabbling. You either need to go all in or stick with your lawnmower and weed whacker. As Burke and I had to do, you'll probably need to teach yourself every aspect of scything: stance, setup, sharpening, all of it. I eventually found great video tutorials on all of those topics. But because scything is such a niche pursuit, the advice didn't land in my feeds with the sort of algorithmic serendipity I'd grown accustomed to for, say, gardening or DIY home improvement. My scythe was hopelessly dull until I hammered it out with a peening jig, which smushes the malleable steel blade into a thinner edge. Everyone I watched on YouTube had mounted the jig in a stump, so that's what I did too. Liam McCabe/NYT Wirecutter The handle, or 'snath,' that I bought wasn't very good (it's not from the kit we recommend). And I've struggled to get a good cutting angle even after some modifications. If I could do it again, I'd spend extra on a better setup. Liam McCabe/NYT Wirecutter My scythe was hopelessly dull until I hammered it out with a peening jig, which smushes the malleable steel blade into a thinner edge. Everyone I watched on YouTube had mounted the jig in a stump, so that's what I did too. Liam McCabe/NYT Wirecutter Burke said he ended up learning a lot through trial and error. He's tried out a few snaths (handles), a half-dozen blades, and other accessories. After experimenting with different peening and honing tools and techniques for a couple of months — going so far as to check the edges under a microscope — he could finally get the blades sharp enough that scything started to feel easy. 'Once I got a feel for it, then it was like, 'I can't go back,'' Burke said. 'It's even starting to dictate how I garden now.' Since a scythe is so much quieter than a lawnmower, he usually cuts the grass before his family wakes up in the morning or after they go to bed. Burke said he finds it easier to scythe the slopes of his property than to push a lawnmower up and down them. The long, neatly cut grass makes a great mulch. He's happy that he's not spraying spools' worth of nylon string trimmer shards into the ecosystem every year. And then there's the vibe: 'The meditative satisfaction is really rewarding … the texture, the feel of it, the sounds — you hear birds all around you.' I'm still chasing that bliss. Even after I bought a peening jig and hammered out the edge of the blade well enough to glide it through all of those overgrown weeds, my scythe still wasn't cutting grass very well. Should I change the angle of the blade? Do I need an even-sharper edge? I need to do more research, and there's probably more gear that I need to buy. Did I mention I like my lawnmower? This article was edited by Megan Beauchamp and Maxine Builder. Clean up your lawn's ragged edges, awkward corners, and steep slopes with a string trimmer. Keep your lawn looking great with these low-hassle, high-performing mowers. A version of Ego's powerful, efficient, cordless lawn mower has been our top pick since 2019.
