Thai + Malay?

Sometimes having to cook at the kitchen every day can makes you ran out of idea what to cook. After looking through the ingredients that were available in the fridge, I had decided to make pandan chicken.

Preparing and marinating the pandan chicken is easy. But it's not easy to wrap the chicken with the pandan leaves, especially if you would like to wrap it into a triangle shape. It was my first time making it, I am not able to wrap into a triangle shape as per what the Malaysian restaurant also does. I only manages to wrap it like a pentagon shape due to the small frozen pandan leaves that I can get here from New Zealand.

The usual way to cook pandan chicken is to deep fried it to enhance the flavour from the pandan leaves. However, this time I opt for a healthier version that was to bake it. It turned out to taste as good as the deep fried version minus the oiliness.

Meanwhile, my partner had managed to get a Malay version food - "tempeh" at an Asian grocery store nearby. Therefore, he was in charge in cooking the vegetables of the day, which was stir fried round beans with chillies and "tempeh".

My partner refer "tempeh" as the Malay version of blue cheese. Why? This is because "tempeh" is actually a soy product whereby it gone through the fermentation process which provides a firm texture with an earthy flavour as it ages. However, once you had cooked it, the "tempeh" become soft and the fragrance of it changes.

Hence that night, we had a Thai dish and Malay dish combination as dinner. Is it weird? No, I don't think so. It blends well for me.

Pandan Chicken Recipe

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

3 skinless and boneless chicken thigh

1 1/2 tablespoon turmeric powder

1 teaspoon palm sugar

2 teaspoon fish sauce

2 teaspoon cooking oil

1 stalk lemon grass

3 shallots

4 kaffir limes leaves

5 cloves garlic

2cm ginger

Pinch of salt and white pepper

Method:

1. Grind lemon grass, shallots, kaffir limes leaves, garlic and ginger until it is fine and evenly mixed.

2. Then add in turmeric powder, fish sauce, palm sugar, vegetable oil, salt and white pepper into the mixtures and mixed in evenly.

3. Marinate the chicken with the mixtures for at least 2 hour. Preferably to marinate it overnight.

4. Wrap the chicken with pandan leaves.

5. Preheat the oven to 180 degree Celcius.

6. Bake the wrapped chicken in the preheat oven for 20 minutes or until it is golden brown.