Tamarind Chicken/ Assam Ayam

This is a variation of the Babi Assam that I tried many years ago.  Since I am going to cut down on buying pork these days and just stick to chicken or turkey from now on, unless that is a particular pork dish that I really wanted to cook, I will refrain from buying pork.  There is no special reason just that I want to switch to my original diet plan before I started slacking and buying more pork few years back.

The Babi Assam kept calling me as I remembered I liked the sauce and flavor a lot.  So, I attempted to recreate this dish with drumsticks and with the ingredients I have at home.  This sauce went so well with rice even my girls enjoyed this slightly spicy sourish sauce with their rice.  If you want to cook something different with chicken, give this dish a try!

Ingredients:

• 8 chicken drumsticks, chopped into half (became 16 pieces)
• 3 Tbsp. tamarind paste mixed with 300ml hot water, smashed and squeezed out the tamarind juice, sieve into a bowl, set aside.
• 1 stalk of lemon grass, bruised
• 3 Tbsp. brown sugar
• 1 tsp. kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp. white pepper

Ground Spices:

• 6 shallots
• 8 cloves garlic if small, 6 cloves garlic if big
• 1 inch ginger
• 4 green/red Thai chili
• 3 Tbsp. Yeo's salted soy bean
• 1 tsp. ground coriander

Method:

1.  Put all the ground spices in a food processor and process until fine.  Set aside.

2.  Chop the drumsticks and marinate it with ShaoHsing rice cooking wine (Hua Tiao), light soy sauce and white pepper.

3.  Heat up a large saucepan with a little cooking oil.  When heated, add in the ground spices and lemon grass.  Stir-fry until fragrant.  Add in the marinated chicken, stir-well.

4.  Add in the 300ml of tamarind juice, stir-well.  Add in the seasonings: brown sugar, salt and pepper.  Let it boils.  Turn the heat to low and let it simmer for an hour to an hour and half or until the chicken release its juices and soft.  Do a taste test and see whether you need to adjust the taste or not.  Serve with hot rice!