Ayam Panggan Setan--The Devil's Grilled Chicken

While satay may be what comes to most people's minds when they think of Indonesian grilled chicken, it is not the only grilled chicken on the block in Java.  Indonesians have numerous ways of enjoying grilled yard bird, and in Indonesia the chicken very often is from a nearby yard.  Ayam kampung, village chicken, is a rangy, flavorful bird, smaller and generally tastier than its American free range cousin.  Throughout Indonesia one can find hawkers selling quarters of grilled chicken.  A whole chicken may not weigh more than two pounds, so the quarters are a nice bite.

Indonesians have an approach to cooking chicken that I have not seen elsewhere.  It's one that particularly makes sense for food vendors that have limited or no access to refrigeration.  Rather than simply frying or grilling the chicken, the birds are first simmered in a spiced liquid until cooked and the liquid reduced.  Sometimes the liquid is merely water with salt and other spices.  Other times coconut milk is used.  The cooked pieces of chicken can then be finished to order.  For kaki lima (the pushcarts hawkers use to transport and cook their foods) sellers, this allows them to get out orders fairly quickly and not have to worry about keeping raw chicken refrigerated in the tropical heat.

Precooking in the seasoned liquid also results in a moist, well spiced piece of chicken.  It is essentially cooking in a brine.  For a picnic or when you want to prepare chicken to feed a crowd, this method allows you to have a large quantity of chicken ready to finish off on the grill in minutes.  Consider it Indonesia's answer to sous vide.

When you see a restaurant or warung advertising ayam panggang setan, the only thing you can be assured of is that the chicken is going to be spicy hot.  Some places may simmer in coconut milk, others may not.  The sambal may use red or green chilies.  It may be suuuppperrrr pueeeedas (the more drawn out the syllables, the hotter the sambal) or simply pedas betul.  If you don't want or can't get a beer with it, have some young coconut juice.  This is one of the dishes that would likely be served with sambal lalapan. 

Ayam Panggang Setan

printable recipe

2--3 pounds of chicken pieces (I like thighs)

Spice Mixture:
5 shallots, peeled and chopped
3 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 inch piece of turmeric, peeled (or use 1 tsp ground turmeric)
3 kemiri (candlenuts)
1 TBS kosher salt
1 tsp peppercorns

3 lemongrass stalks, roughly chopped and pounded
6 kaffir lime leaves
half a thumb of galangal (laos) sliced and pounded
3/4 cup water

Sambal:
8 large red chilies
8 Thai red bird chilies
7 shallots, peeled
5 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 tomato
1 tsp salt
1 tsp shrimp paste (terasi/belacan), roasted
2 TBS vegetable oil

kecap manis

In a mortar or food processor, grind the ingredients for the spice mixture into a fine paste.  Mix the chicken pieces with the paste.  Add the chicken with the lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal and water to a wok.  Simmer over medium heat until the chicken is cooked and the liquid has been absorbed/cooked off.  The chicken can be cooked ahead to this point and then held until you are ready to grill.

In a medium saucepan, boil the chilies, shallots, garlic, and tomato a few minutes until softened.  Drain.  Heat the oil in a frying pan or wok and briefly fry the boiled ingredients.  Process in a blender/food processor until smooth.  Add the salt and shrimp paste and pulse until incorporated.

Although you can grill the chicken directly over coals, as they would in Indonesia, I prefer the indirect approach, which allows you to lacquer chicken with the sauce.  In a Weber kettle grill or something similar, prepare a bed of coals on one side of the grill.  Brush both sides of the chicken with kecap manis and then brush on the sambal.  Place the chicken pieces skin-side up on the opposite side of the grill.  Cook for 10 to 15 minutes, until well browned.  Serve with more sambal and rice.

Korean Bacon Explosion

 

The original bacon explosion, according to the NY Times, was originally done as part challenge and part stunt to attract traffic to BBQAddicts.com.  It was wildly successful, generating over 27,000 hits on Christmas Day, a few days after its posting, and almost half a million hits within one month.  Nothing quite celebrates the birth of Jesus like several pounds of bacon wrapped around several pounds of sausage stuffed with more fried bacon.  Talk about your come to Jesus moments!

Since its debut, the bacon explosion has attracted numerous admirers and detractors.  It is an excessive, over the top celebration of pork.  About two years after it first appeared on the net, EpicMealTime, a Youtube production by a group of stupid smart Canucks, applied the principles of the bacon explosion to a series celebrating excess, gaining over two and a quarter million subscribers to their weekly episodes.  Vegetarians, dietitians, and people who are upset by seeing food wasted while millions are hungry, may not find EpicMealTime or the bacon explosion their cup of tea.  I, however, appreciate this brand of humor. 

The impetus for my take on the bacon explosion was the expiration of my nephew's visa. Sam has been staying with us the last several months while looking for a job.  Having graduated with a degree in finance, he was unable to find a job in the current market here in the States.  As a result, he must return to Indonesia.  My family wanted a chance to say goodbye to him before he left, so my sister and her husband hosted a farewell dinner at their house on Sunday.  Kathy and my mother provided drinks and dessert, my brother and his wife brought the beer, and I brought the food.  Everyone in our family likes pork, and Sam is fond of Korean food (although he's a wuss when it comes to spiciness), so I thought I'd try to come up with a variation on the bacon explosion using fresh pork belly.

Sliced pork belly can be found in some Asian markets; I bought it at the local Ranch 99.  I removed the skin from the slices and fried those up. 

Around the strips of fried skin I wrapped a little over three pounds of pork shoulder that I had ground and seasoned with salt, powdered dehydrated onion, cayenne, Korean BBQ sauce and Chinese chili in oil sauce. (Commercial sausage and most ground pork in the supermarket has an even higher fat content.  Commercial sausage also tends to be very heavily salted.  It may seem foolish to worry about fat and salt content in a recipe such as this, but I think you end up with a tastier dish, which may be marginally less harmful from a health standpoint.) 

I marinated a little over a pound and a half of thinly sliced beef brisket that I bought at a Korean market in some Korean BBQ sauce. 

I wrapped the ground pork mixture with the marinated beef slices. 

I then wrapped the beef wrapped pork mixture with a blanket of woven pork belly slices. 

I seasoned the exterior with a liberal sprinkling of a dry rub containing paprika, ancho chili powder, powdered ginger, cayenne, brown sugar, and sea salt. 

This was smoked for about 4 hours at 225º F, until the internal temperature of the pork reached 160º F. The last half hour I brushed the top with the Korean BBQ sauce.

 

We had ca tai chanh with sesame crackers as an appetizer.  For dinner, I provided grilled asparagus salad with black bean vinaigrette,  red leaf lettuce for wrapping the sliced meat roll, pickled daikon and julienned carrots for adding to the rolls, and steamed rice.  Kathy made some ice cream pies for dessert.  This was plenty for twelve adults, providing another night of leftovers.

Rendang

 I had been planning to make some rendang for some time before I finally got around to it. As much as I hunger for it, I only make it four to six times a year. A quintessentially Indonesian dish--slow, incredibly rich yet unpretentious, spicy with a steady heat that sidles up to you--it's a dish that demands your time and attention. Essentially a stew that is simmered until almost all the liquid has been absorbed or cooked off, like many stews it seems even better the next day.

I first tasted rendang on a picnic in Java. I had only been in the country a few weeks when one of my students and her husband took me to Sarangan, a mountainous lake in Central Java. Vivi was originally from Solok, a small town near Padang in West Sumatra where rendang originated. The rendang that Vivi made was from beef and beef liver.

Liver is something I abhor. My gag reflex kicks in whenever I have to eat it. The first bite of rendang I had was simply beef. Then I got a piece of liver. Even rendang could not disguise that distinctive texture and taste of liver. However, the sauce was so luscious I didn't mind at all. Vivi had made a large batch (rendang is not a meal to cook for two) and I could have eaten all of it by myself. When they dropped me off at my room later that evening, Vivi and her husband gave me a pint or more of leftovers (half of which I ate as soon as I was alone). The rest I ate the next morning, cold, and it was still phenomenal.

Several years later, I got the chance to visit Padang, and even made it to Solok where I met Vivi's mother. Padang was a quiet, unassuming city, much quieter and more sparsely populated than cities in Java. It was a wonderful city to visit, one I hope to return to again some day.

The recent earthquake there apparently caused extensive damage. At least 3,000 people died as a direct result of the quake. People who had little were left with nothing. It is hard for us in the United States, especially those who have never been in developing countries, to appreciate how so many who have so little can face such devastation. The disasters attract our attention and sympathy for a minute but then we're distracted by the next bit of fluff, a shiny ballon drifting over a desert, or the pop star du jour's latest meltdown. We can't bring ourselves to acknowledge that but for the luck of being born where we were, we too could be facing such loss.

In the face of such disasters and poverty and children dying for want of clean water or mosquito netting, it seems almost obscene to be blogging about food. I don't know quite how to reconcile my feelings about this dichotomy. I have put in some time volunteering to help people less well off than I, but is that enough? What's the point of sharing recipes? Perhaps people tasting the food of a country will take a moment to think of the people in that country. Perhaps it's just a selfish act. I don't know. Any ideas or feedback is certainly welcome. In the meantime, here's Vivi's recipe for rendang.

A printable version of the recipe is available here.

Vivi’s Rendang

3 pounds chuck roast cut into 2 inch cubes
2 15 oz cans coconut milk
2 cups water

1/4 to 1/3 cup finely chopped or ground red chilies (can use sambal oelek if fresh hot red chilies aren’t available)
1 head of garlic (about 50 grams), coarsely chopped
6--8 shallots (about 150 grams), coarsely chopped
5 kemiri (candle nuts)
1 tsp coriander seeds, ground
1/2 a nut of nutmeg, ground
5 cloves, ground
1 two-inch finger of turmeric, peeled and chopped (2 tsp ground turmeric)
3 thumbs of ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 thumb of laos (galingale) peeled and sliced
1 tsp kosher salt

3 daun salam
6 kaffir lime leaves
2 stalks of lemongrass, bruised with a pestle

Pulse the chilies, shallots, garlic, spices and salt in a food processor until you have a somewhat smooth paste.

In a dutch oven or similar pot, mix beef and spice paste. Add coconut milk, water, salam and kaffir lime leaves, and lemongrass and bring to a boil over medium heat. Lower the heat to maintain a steady simmer and stir every fifteen minutes or so. Open a beer, or the beverage of your choice, turn on some good music and relax. Like good barbecue, the secret to good rendang is cooking it low and slow. You can’t rush it.

James Oseland, in his excellent book Cradle of Flavor, recommends using a shallow, wide pan to cook rendang to speed up the evaporation process. I disagree for two reasons. One, I think you just need to give it the time it needs. Two, as you get near the end the oils tend to sputter and pop; with a shallow pan you will find your kitchen spattered with turmeric freckles.

As the liquid reduces you need to reduce the heat and stir more often. The rendang is done when the sauce has been reduced to a thick paste and is a chocolate brown.

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