Ayam Bakar Padang (Padang Grilled Chicken)

Ingredients:

* 2 whole chicken, cut into quarters
* 8 shallots, thinly sliced
* 2 stalks lemongrass, bruised
* 2 glasses coconut milk
* 4 cm galangal, bruised
* 1 tbs tamarind juice
* 2 tbs vegetable oil

Spice paste ingredients:

* 8 candle nuts
* 6 red chilies
* 4 cm ginger
* 2 cm turmeric
* 1 tsp pepper seeds
* salt to taste

Directions:

* Grind spice paste ingredients in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle into a fine paste.
* Saute minced shallots until yellowed. Add spice paste, lemongrass, galangal.? Continue stir-frying until fragrant. Pour 2 glasses of water and tamarind juice.? Stir to combine. Let it simmer until the chicken is tender.
* Add coconut milk. Continue simmering and stirring until oil starts to come out. Remove.
* Grill chicken until browned on both sides.
* Remove and serve. If there is leftover of spice mixture, sprinkle it over chicken.

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Ayam Pop (Padang Style Fried Chicken)

Ayam pop (literally means “popular chicken”) is a signature dish of many well known Padang Restaurants. The chain restaurant “Simpang Raya”, for instance, dubbed themselves “Istana Ayam Pop”? (“The Ayam Pop Palace”) and claim to have the most delicious ayam pop in town. While every restaurant has their own well-guarded secret recipe to producing their unique ayam pop, we can guess from the end product what ingredients and cooking method used to prepare them. Cooking a delicious ayam pop? is not a rocket science, isn’t it? :-) Ayam pop is unique because it is fried chicken but doesn’t look like one. It’s silver-colored, not brown. And it’s just heavenly yummy, too!

Below is the generic recipe for ayam pop. If it’s difficult to avail the coconut juice, replace it with water.
Ingredients

* 1 medium sized organic whole chicken. Cut into quarters, skin removed
* 2 ltr coconut juice (the water inside the coconut, NOT coconut milk)
* 1 tsp white ground pepper
* 6 cloves garlic, ground
* 2 cm ginger, bruised
* 2 tbs margarine
* vegetable oil for deep frying
* salt to taste

Directions:

* Melt margarine in a wok on medium heat. Stir fry garlic until fragrant, add white ground pepper, coconut juice, ginger and salt. Bring to the boil.
* Add chicken. Let it simmer for around 30-45 minutes until the liquid evaporates and the chicken is tender.
* Remove the chicken and drain.
* Preheat vegetable oil in a frying pan on low temperature. Deep fry the chicken slowly for 10 minutes.
* Remove and serve.

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Selling Indonesian food on the street sidewalk

There are many side­walk stalls in Indone­sia. They are called “5 foot side­walk stalls” because they sell on side­walk (known as Peda­gang Kaki lima: or 5 foot) where the width is 5 feet long. So, we don’t need to come in a restau­rant or food stall to fill in our stom­achs.

f our pocket is in cri­sis, come and try food in the side­walk. They usu­ally sell on a small tent or push­cart on side­walk city. They have unique ways to attract peo­ple. For exam­ple, a meat ball seller strikes the meat ball pan or a Indone­sian chicken noo­dle seller makes sounds by bam­boos. Sure, it will not be a bor­ing culi­nary tourism.

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