The Recipe for Chicken a la King

When I was a child in Malaysia, my father would sometimes take us to the Club for Sunday lunch. The Club was an old, low slung wooden building in central Kuala Lumpur, with a long verandah and cane easy chairs. It used to belong to the British, a cross between a gentlemen’s club and a cricket pavilion. You could sit on the verandah with your gin sling and watch the chaps on the padang (the green) in their cricket whites bowling and making runs. The Moorish-style court and government buildings stretched across the green, a backdrop to the game. To the left was the small white Anglican chapel, in the shade of the raintrees. For the British, it must have been home away from home, laid out like any Engligh village - the town hall, church and pub around a village green.

My father would take us to the dining room, where the doors opened out onto the verandah. I remember white table cloths and side plates and knives and forks. There would be curled pats of cold butter in a small plate, gathering dew in the heat. We got soft, white rolls to start. It was all very Western and strange. My mother showed us how to tear the rolls and smear on a dab of butter, keeping the side plate on the side at all times.

I always had Chicken a la King - dainty pieces of skinless chicken breast in a white sauce with red peppers, served with buttered rice. The waiter would come round with a two trayed dish, the rice in one hollow and the chicken in the other. He would painstakingly dish the rice onto my plate with a spoon and fork held in one hand and then painstakingly dish the creamy meat onto the rice. It seemed to me a very inefficent way to serve the meal - why didn’t they just put it all onto my plate in the kitchen and bring it out to me? Or, as the Chinese would do, plonk a bowl of rice and a bowl of chicken on the table and I could help myself?

They served Chicken a la King in two other ex-colonial places, the Golf Club and the Coq D’Or. My father didn’t play golf but we kids loved the huge swimming pools at the Golf Club. The Coq D’Or was in an old Chinese-style mansion and seemed to my childish eyes the height of smart back then in the ’sixties. These were the sorts of places where the waiters wore white jackets and people drank aperitifs and wine. So, Chicken a la King seemed to me the epitome of Englishness.

When I came to England later, no restaurants served Chicken a la King. No English person I met had ever heard of it. How could this be? I was mystified and felt cheated. How could England be England without Chicken a la King?

And then I met my partner. I was in my thirties by now. We were coming up to the end of the millenium and soon, London would be gearing up for its grand New Year celebrations. Angie is from South Africa and when I told her about our Sunday lunches at the old colonial club where Chicken a la King was my favourite meal, she cried, "My father used to take us to the club on Sundays as well. And they had Chicken a la King there!"

In damp, drizzly London we compared notes from our childhoods. There I was in the heavy, close heat of the tropics and there she was in the dry, dusty African heat, both sitting at linen-clad tables with doors that opened out onto the verandah. A Chinese or Malay waiter with caramel skin spooned my meal while a dark Indian spooned hers. Both wore white jackets. Out in the sun, thousands of miles a part, men in white played cricket. Her father had been a young Englishman from Blackpool who had gone out to Africa to find a new life in the colonies. There in Durban, he could belong to a club, own a big house, be someone. My father was just starting out as a lawyer in newly Independent Malaya. With the British gone, he now could belong to the club that had once excluded him, own a big house, be someone.

Angie is also the only other person I know in England who likes evaporated milk in her tea and coffee - and who has ever had canned peaches in evaporated milk. Tins of Carnation milk. They must have been stock supplies for the British out in their far flung colonies. In countries where dairy products are rare because of the heat, Carnation milk must have been for the British the taste of home. And our creamy favourite Chicken a la King was probably originally made with evaporated milk. It strikes me that my generation is probably the last that will remember the quirks of the Empire.

So, for future generations, here is the recipe for Chicken a la King (adapted for cooking in the UK):

1. Boil skinless chicken breasts until cooked. One breast per person.
2. Remove cooked breasts from water. Do not throw away the water - we will use it to cook the rice. Cut the breasts into small pieces eg one inch cubes.
3. Cook white rice as you would normally, using the stock from the boiled chicken instead of water. (If there’s not enough stock, top it up with water).
4. Fry chopped garlic and chopped red peppers in butter until soft. Remove from frying pan.
5. Pour a large pot of double cream into the frying pan and heat slowly. When it starts to bubble, simmer until the quantity has been reduced to about half the original volume.
6. Put the fried garlic, red peppers and cooked chicken pieces into the reduced cream. Add salt and pepper and a dash of sherry. Cook for a few minutes to let the flavours settle into each other.
7. When the rice is cooked, stir into it a knob of butter.
8. Serve the rice with the chicken. Singing "Rule Britannia" before tucking in is not obligatory.

pic from flickr by Kenneth Kiffer; non-commercial use only.

[View of the administrative building across the padang from the Club]