Chicken Rendang/Dry Chicken Curry Recipes

I always have a soft spot for chicken or beef Rendang. That is the very first Malay dish I learned to cook from my friend Kak Zuliah mom’s many years ago. Now there are so many ready packed rendang paste but I still prefer to cook it from scratch as most of the ingredients are readily available here. I even plant my own kaffir lime and turmeric plants now. Turmeric can’t survive the winter so I cut all the leaves up and freeze it so that I can use it whenever I want. The ingredients are pretty similar to my beef rendang; the only difference would be the cooking time as the chicken get tender pretty fast compare to beef.

Ingredients:

1 chicken – around 2.5 pounds
3 fresh turmeric leaves – sliced thinly (optional)
3 tbsp of kerisik (coconut paste)
3 kaffir lime leaves (limau purut)
2 cup of coconut milk + some water
Salt and palm sugar/sugar to taste

To blend into paste:

10 shallots
2" of lengkuas (galangal)
2" of ginger
2 stalk of lemongrass
4 cloves of garlic
10 dried chilies (soaked until soft)
10 fresh red chilies
2” fresh turmeric or 2 tbsp of turmeric powder
2 tbsp meat curry powder

For Kerisik (coconut paste)

1 cup of fresh grated coconut

1. In a non-stick pan, dry fry the grated coconut until golden brown.
2. Removed and blend it into paste while it is still hot until it is fine and paste like.

1. Clean, remove skin and fats from the chicken. Cut the chicken into medium size pieces.
2. Heat about 3 tbsp of oil in a wok and gently fry the blended paste for 2 minutes or until slightly dry and fragrant.
3. Add in the chicken and continue to stir-fry until the chicken changes color. Add in coconut milk and enough water to cover the chicken. Bring it to boil. Roughly tear up the kaffir lime leaves and add it into the beef. Reduce heat to simmer.
4. Cover and simmer and stir occasionally and cook until meat is tender. If the dish dries up too fast, do add a little more hot water or coconut milk to it.
5. Add in palm sugar, salt to taste. Add in the turmeric leaves and kerisik (coconut paste) and cook till the sauce dries up. Serve with warm rice.

Note: The level of spiciness can be adjusted to your liking. The same recipe can also be used in the same way for beef and lamb

I am submitting this dish to Muhibbah Malaysia Monday

For more details please refer here