Balinese Chicken Curry - Ayam Suna Cekuh

Every time I feel homesick, this is the type of dish that never fails to cheer me up. Not only it's a no effort and time saver dish, the unique flavour of this chicken curry sometimes makes me so emotional as if I am home with all those good memories, those yummy food my mom always cook for us. Back home we called this "Ayam Suna Cekuh" wich means chicken with garlic and sand ginger.

Using only few ingredients such as chicken, garlic, turmeric, sand ginger and coconut milk, I guarantee you that you will love this recipe. The only thing that even myself find it a bit challenging is to get some sand ginger, in Singapore they are available in Malay wet market. However, for those of you who don't have access to it, don't worry you can look up online, they called sand ginger as aromatic ginger, reizoma kaempferae or kampferia galanga.

Now let's get cooking. Make sure to cook plain rice before making this recipe. Just like any other asian curry dishes, rice and curry are just a perfect combination.

It traditionally served as curry type dish with green bean and fried shallots.

AYAM SUNA CEKUH

Balinese Chicken Curry

• Prep Time: 10 minutes

• Cook Time: 10 minutes

• Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 200 gr chicken breats

• 100 ml of coconut cream

• Cooking oil

• Bay leaf

• Kaffir lime leaf

Paste:

• 2 cloves of garlic

• 1 cm of turmeric (1 tsp of turmeric powder)

• 1 cm of sand ginger (1 tsp of sand ginger powder)

• 2 chilis ( adjust to your taste)

• 2 candlenuts (optional)

• 1/4 tsp of shrimp paste

• 1 tsp of salt

I tried to plate it in a different style, bringing my masterchef wanna be alive

Instructions

1. Mix all the seasoning into paste.

2. Pour some oil into the pa, fried the chicken and set aside when it turns slightly brown.

3. You either shredded ( traditional style) or smashed ( different plating) the chicken

4. Remove remaining oil from the pan and leave about 2 tbs to saute the paste

5. Add the paste, bay leave and kaffir live leave, stir for few minutes then add coconut cream.

6. Keep stiring until it combined well.

7. When you want to serve the traditional styke, add 100 ml of water, green bean, shredded chicken and bring to boil.

8. If you want to try different style of plating, you don't need to add extra water. All you need to do is to strain them and use it as a sauce to compliment your smashed chicken.

Please watch below for detail recipe.

Notes

1. If you don't have shrimp paste, you can replace it with fish sauce but of course the taste will be slightly different.

2. This is a curry based dish but it's totally different if you compare it to Indian based curry dishes.

3. Please adjust the salt to your taste, it's always better to under season as you can add more salt later on. In case it happens that you add too much salt, it's not a big deal. You can always add extra coconut cream or a bit more water.