my version of Sambal Chicken

On last weekend, we visited a restaurant on the beach, which served freshly caught prawns cooked in sambal sauce. They were really delicious. Sambal paste is a widely used paste in Asia,especially in Malaysian, Indonesian and Singaporean cuisine. Inspite of living here for more than an year, I haven't tried to learn much about cooking the popular food here...., so I thought this recipe was a good one to start. What I have made today,  may or may not be very authentic, I read about sambal paste recipes on the internet and found that there are 100s of recipes according to countries, regions and even cooks. These are the common ingredients-- spicy red hot chilies, shrimp paste, garlic and shallots, plus and minus some ingredients. Lot of information about Sambal paste here !! This is how, I made this recipe......

Ingredients:

• 5-6 cloves of garlic
  
• 5-6 red chilies(I have used bird's eye chilies, can use dried red ones too...soak them in water for about 10-15 minutes)
• 1 tbsp shrimp paste -about 15 gms (I used belacan , that is a malay variety of shrimp paste)
• 3 stalks of lemon grass
• 4-5 shallots
• 1 lemon (juiced)
• about 1 kg of chicken (I used about 850 gms of whole chicken with bones, without skin)
• salt to marinate the chicken -- about 1 tsp
• 2-3 tbsp oil
• coriander leaves and chili to garnish

Recipe:

• Wash and clean the chopped chicken. Drain out all the water. Rub a tsp of salt over the chicken and keep it aside.
• Keep one stalk of lemongrass aside, chop the remaining two, after removing outer layers. Remove skins of the garlic and shallots and tops of the chilies.
• Put it all in a blender or a food processor and pulse for 20 seconds, till it all comes together as a paste. You can do it by hand too, with the help of mortar and pestle. 

• Add the block of shrimp paste to the above paste and pulse again to get a fine puree. Add lemon juice to the paste. Sambal paste is ready.

• Heat about 2-3 tbsp oil in a pan. Add the sambal paste to it.

• Saute it, stirring well for 3-4 minutes.

• Add chicken and let the spices get coated onto the chicken.

• Stir well and let the chicken cook for 4-5 minutes till it becomes white.

• Add about 1- 1.5 cups of water(I added the water to the grinder in which I made the sambal paste and kinda cleaned out the sambal paste) to the chicken, and let it simmer on low flame for another 7-8 minutes.

• Garnish with chopped lemon grass, coriander and lime wedges.

• Serve hot with fragrant jasmine rice.

Quantity:

• 4-6 servings

Notes:

• I have used the least possible chilies to make the sambal paste. You can increase the chilies to 10 or even more for a really fiery hot sambal paste.
• If you are using dried red chilies, soak them in water for 10-15 minutes.
• To reduce the heat, remove the seeds. 
• My version was fairly okay in terms of spice level.... even my little one could have it(just the chicken without the gravy), so I did not feel the need to remove the seeds. 
• You can add a bit of sugar to the paste to balance the tartness of the limes, heat of the chilies and saltiness of the shrimp paste. I didn't add.. !!
• As with other chicken recipes, make it ahead and let it sit in sambal sauce for 6-12 hours. It tastes really good that way....!!
• You can use this paste to make prawns or grilled fish too...!!
• A special note to my Malaysian and Singaporean readers: Do let me know, how do you make your Sambal paste !!!