Ayam Masak Merah – ‘red cooked chicken’ from Malaysia ❤️

One of the challenges I enjoy is finding recipes from the books I have to try and utilise left over ingredients I have from previous cooking plus with whatever we have in the fridge!

From the curry I cooked at the weekend I have a tin of opened coconut milk (as previous dish only needed 100ml) and a tin of chopped tomatoes and passata. In the fridge I had half a tray of chicken breasts.

This recipe was perfect and it the first time I’d attempted it. It had three basic stages, prep took about 15 minutes and the cooked another 30 which is still quicker than your average takeaway delivery !!

Ingredients-

Part 1 – A tray of chicken breasts, 1 tsp of ground turmeric, 1 cup of plain flour, 1 tsp of salt.

Part 2 – 10 dried chillies soaked in hot water for 10 minutes, 1 red onion finely diced, 2 heaped tbsp of garlic & ginger paste, 1 tsp of galangal, lemon grass stalks (sadly I didn’t have any so I didn’t add them).

Part 3 – 250ml rapeseed oil, 1 star anise, 1 small cinnamon stick, 2 cardamom pods smashed up, 2 cloves, 400ml of passata, 400ml of coconut milk plus salt and pepper.

Method –

Part 1 –

The chicken prep. In a mixing bowl add the flour, turmeric and salt then mix well. You may want to wear gloves to prevent the turmeric staining your hands.

Add the chicken and coat well.

Set aside whilst you make part 2, the paste. As you set this aside the chicken will change colour due to the turmeric 👍

Part 2

Making the cooking paste.

Removed the red dried chillies which have been soaking in hot water.

Add them to the chopped red onion, garlic & ginger paste, galangal in a blender.

Whizz all of this together to make a paste. This takes less than 30 seconds.

Heat the oil in a heavy based pan. Once the oil is hot and bubbles are forming add your coated chicken and fry in small batches.

You want the chicken to slightly brown and become nice a crispy giving it a nice outside coating .

Once you’ve cooked all of your chicken, set it aside on kitchen paper to drain off any access oil.

Remove 3/4’s of the oil from your pan. Return the pan to the heat. Add in the whole spices – cardamom, star anise, cinnamon stick and cloves. Swirl these around the hot oil for 30 seconds or so.

Stir in the prepared paste.

Cook this out for about a minute to remove the rawness of the ingredients. It will change colour slightly.

Add in your chopped tomatoes, passata and coconut milk. Bring this to a simmer.

Once it’s been simmer for a couple of minutes and the sauce is thickening add back in your fried chicken pieces.

Allow this to simmer for 5 minutes or so. I still use a cooking probe to check the core temperatures of the meat I’m cooking….old habits never die. Season with salt and pepper. Once the knew the chicken was cooked I served up.

I served mine up with precooked steamed basmati rice and diced cucumber.

Thank you for reading my ramblings if you have. I really enjoyed this process and how tasty the dish was. Simple and tasty cooking. Again, the recipe was inspired by Dan Toombs and I modified it to suit my ingredients within the house.