Chicken Sambal

This recipe came from the recipe book 'Malaysian Favourites'. Got this book before I left Malaysia, was sure that food is definitely one of the thing that I'd miss from Malaysia. But I'm not sure if I've ever came across any dish called 'Chicken Sambal' or maybe they just call it something else at the Nasi Lemak stall?But anyway I was curious when i saw this recipe, I've tempered with the proportion of everything in the original recipe though, I just used all the ingredients that they listed but to my liking. So if you do try this, feel free to tamper with my proportions as well, after all we all like our food very differently.

This is a 4S yummy, SWEET, SOUR, SPICY, SALTY! How this dish turns out tasting is totally at your mercy and I promise this is worth all the effort.
Ingredients:-

Whole chicken or chicken piece, I have 19 drumsticks here
Turmeric powder
Salt
8 dried chili soaked
2 tbsp of chili powder
2 large onions
8 cloves of garlic
1 inch of ginger
1 inch of galangal
6 tbsp of tomato sauce
7 tbsp of chili with garlic sauce
3 tbsp of plum sauce
1 cup water
4 tsp of sugar
3 tsp of salt

Method
Mix together some turmeric powder with salt, enough to coat all your chicken pieces. How much salt you add in here is entirely up to you. Rub all the chicken pieces and leave aside to marinate for at least 1 hour.


After the marinating process, you could opt to deep fry the chicken or grill them in your oven. I went with the oven, less mess and healthier and I promise the result is just as good as having deep fried them. I used 'fan grill' at 180C and they took roughly 30-35 minutes. For good practise purposes, you should always use your grilling rack when grilling as it would prevent your chicken having to sit in any of its fats or liquid hence crispier. I always go for easy options, line the trays with tin foil. After all the chicken will be cooked in gravy later on, so it won't make much of a difference. Now that's just me being lazy :)

Looks just as good as deep fried.

Put all the spices into a blender and blend it to a fine paste i.e., dried chill, chili powder, onions, garlic, ginger and galangal. Heat up your wok, add in about 2 tbsp of oil and saute the spices till fragrant. You'll find that the spices absorbs the oil pretty quickly, just add on more oil if necessary and sparingly. Do saute the spices for at least 5 minutes, you don't want to taste the spices too raw.
In a separate bowl, mix the chili and garlic sauce, tomato sauce and plum sauce together. The portion that I've listed above is just a mere guide (take note of my large portion too), you should mix up the sauces and then taste it and adjust it to your liking. Once you're satisfied, add it into the sauteed spices together with some water (as much as it takes to achieve the sauce consistency that you prefer. Let it come to a simmer before adding in the chicken.


Thank god for my huge wok here "hehe". Let the chicken simmer on low flame, you'd want to give the chicken an opportunity to absorb all that sauces. Salt and sugar to taste and VOILA!


Enjoy this with white rice, I was actually wishing that I had some fried "mantao" to go with this.