Buah Keluak Chicken – Journey of 7 fragrances

Cooking cannot be just about eating. I like to think cooking is about:
1. changing mindset for many of us city dwellers – hey, I can do it at home too!
2. understanding what goes into the dish that will go into our belly – the best way to keep healthy
3. discovering the variety of ingredients and spices that transform into – our favorite food
4. preparing and cooking them in different ways, introducing the different amount at different time, over different fire
5. tantalizing our nose buds with the pleasure of different fragrances at the different stages of preparing and cooking the ingredients and spices.


Ayam buah keluak, a chicken dish cooked using the nuts from Pangium edule or the "Kepayang" tree, a mangrove tree that grows in Malaysia and Indonesia.
These nuts are actually hard-shell seeds from the fruits that look like papayas, but are harder, more rough-textured and more brown. http://www.nparks.gov.sg/blogs/garden_voices/index.php/2007/01/11/buah-keluak/
The raw seeds taken from the fruits are poisonous. Native people detoxify the seeds before consuming them. One way is to boil the seeds with the shells intact and then burying the boiled seeds in ash for over 40 days.
Hence, there is a need to soak and scrub these seeds to remove the stubborn ash for a few days before they are ready for cooking. The reason for soaking them is also to soften the ‘meat’ or bulb within.


Ingredients
1 chicken, cut into 16 pieces $ 8
50 Black nuts (buah keluak) soaked for a few days, scrubbed daily $12
13 types of spices $10
6 candlenuts (buah keras), washed thoroughly
8 slices blue ginger/galangal (langkwas)
4 cm piece fresh yellow ginger/tumeric (kunyit)
2 cm fresh ginger
3 stalk lemon grass, 2 sliced, 1 bruised
20 dried red chilies, soaked in boiled water and pounded
30 shallots, pounded
7 pieces garlic
20g pepper corn
1 litre water
2 tsp salt
1 cm Palm Sugar (Gula Melaka)
20 g Shrimp paste (Belachan)
4 tbsp tamarind (assam), soaked with 1 liter water, strained


















Preparing
Soak buah keluak for a few days, scrub each nut daily.
Chip off the smooth part of the buah keluak with the pestle or thick end of a chopper. Dig out any loose chips.


















Pounding
1. Pound the candlenuts. Remove from mortar.
2. Pound pepper corns, add and pound these: 5 slices of galangal (langkwas), tumeric (kunyit), ginger and 2 stalk of lemon grass finely sliced. This is the first fragrance from the crushed gingers. Remove from mortar.
3. Pound soaked dried red chillies.
4. Pound the shallots and garlic























Frying the Rempah
1. Fry 500 ml oil.
2. Add and fry the shallot/garlic mix until there’s a second fragrance from the fry. Reduce fire.
3. Add pounded candle nuts.
4. Add chilli. third fragrance
5. Add ginger mix
6. Add belachan.
7. Stir fry for 2 - 4 minutes until the rempah’s fragrance is very noticeably stronger. fourth fragrance



Cooking the gravy
8. Add tamarind water and stir
9. Add 2 half-stalk of lemon grass and 3 slices galangal
10. Add 2 tsp salt, Gula Melaka
11. Add Buah Keluak
12. Add Chicken
Bring to boil and simmer for 30 minutes until the gravy turns darker and the fragrance of the Buah Keluak fills the room. This is the fifth fragrance.

















Applying Raymond’s Secret (From Guan Hoe Soon Restaurant, Joo Chiat Road, Singapore) http://www.makansutra.com/Makanzine/Nov99/ayam_buah_keluak.html
Allow the dish to cool, transfer to a pot, store the dish overnight in the fridge, and as the gravy absorbs into the meat and nut more completely, a new sixth fragrance emerges upon re-heating.
















Serving with steamedg rice
As soon as the gravy, nuts and chicken hits the steaming rice, one can expect unrestricted saliva flow. Hot rice and buah keluak makes up the seventh fragrance.
















edited by joel low