Garang Asem Ayam (Chicken in Sour Coconut Milk Sauce)

One day I got so confused what I have to cook for the day. Suddenly I remember Garang Asem Ayam (Chicken in Sour Coconut Milk Sauce) that I used to eat when I was in Pati, Kudus and Semarang. There is a restaurant in Pati calls Surya Baru which is offer some good foods and Garang Asem is one of their menu. I and my family used to eat there. The owner is a Chinese descendant, no wonder they cook very well.  So, I looked at my freezer, oh I still have some attached back chicken legs, so I'm going to use that. The sourness suppose to come either from 'belimbing wuluh/ belimbing keris' ('bilimbi' in English), tamarind or green tomatoes. Because I don't have any bilimbi and coincidentally I have to pick some of my green tomatoes in my garden (due to cooler weather which is start to approaching lately), so I just used green tomato instead.

Now, here it is the ingredients:

1 attached back leg chicken

2 pieces of galangal

4 pieces of bay leaves

1 egg

150 ml coconut milk

3 fresh red Thai chilies, cut in angle

1 medium green tomato, cut into wedges

1 medium red tomato, cut into wedges

1 tsp tamarind, mix in 100 ml lukewarm water

some banana leaves

some plastic wraps

2 pieces of toothpicks

Spices to blend:

2 shallots

2 small cloves of garlic

2 tsp coriander

2 tsp white pepper

3/4 tsp salt

1 cm of ginger

1 candle nut

1 tbs vegetable oil

1/2 tsp sugar

Direction:

1. Blend all the spices.
2. Cut chicken into 3 pieces.
3. Sauté the blend of spices with oil until fragrant.
4. Add coconut milk, let it shimmer then add egg and tamarind water. Stir it evenly until boil.
5. Take banana leaves, put plastic wrap on top of it then arrange galangal, bay leaf and chicken. Sprinkle with some cut tomatoes and fresh chili peppers. Wrap with banana leaves and pinned with toothpick.
6. Steam it for 60 minutes ( I used the electric steamer).

Serving 2 people