Vinegared Chicken and Rice Casserole

This is no ordinary casserole, but a direct descendant of a modern Japanese dish: chicken cooked in vinegar and served as part of a succession of dainty cuts of fish, seafood, poultry and meat in an expensive restaurant or saké bar. In the saké bar, this exquisite food and the rice wine complement each other; you do not eat rice until the very end of the meal, when a small bowl of the whitest rice is served to each guest, to be eaten with chopsticks down to the very last grain.