Ayam Sioh (Chicken with Tamarind-Coriander) Recipe

Ayam Sioh was the first recipe that we were taught in our Peranakan cooking course.  

This style of cooking can be daunting to the uninitiated. The steps and ingredients are unfamiliar to me. So a simpler recipe like this - where the rempah (spice paste) is solely made up of shallots - is the perfect introduction. It leaves me free to just focus on the workflow of a typical Peranakan recipe. There are many things to figure out.   

For example, perhaps, where you're going to find a mortar and pestle. 

Can you get away with blitzing the spices in a food processor? Go for it. Romantics insist food processors are inferior to a mortar and pestle, but they aren't the one doing the hard labour now, are they? Violet Oon, a Singaporean Peranakan restauranteur, recommends using a food processor. Pearly Kee, a Peranakan cookbook author based in Penang who also runs a cooking school, similarly reassured readers that she can't tell the difference. For what it's worth, our cooking school instructor also encouraged us to use the food processors on our benches. It makes sense. Stews are so forgiving. The typical Peranakan recipe also has so many ingredients, I'd imagine that the proportion and quantity of ingredients would affect the end-results much more than whether a food processor was involved. So go ahead and blitz the ingredients. If anyone gives you grief for using a food processor, you can invite them to come over half a day earlier next time to help with a mortar and pestle. 

There's so much work involved in a Peranakan recipe. I turned on an episode of Abbott Elementary (anyone watching this?) and got to peeling the small mountain of shallots sitting in front of me. Those things are tiny, and it's no mean feat to get them peeled and chopped roughly even in preparation for a food processor. In fact, I was half-considering buying bags of peeled shallots the next time I go to Tekka Centre, because it was time-consuming. Do you really want to reach for the mortar and pestle after all that peeling and chopping? Half the day would have gone by, and you haven't even reached for the stove yet.  

Feel free to use a food processor. Really. Or even pre-peeled shallots. And if anyone tries to shame you, well, you know what you can tell them. 

Ayam Sioh (Chicken with Tamarind-Coriander) Recipe

Ingredients
240g shallots
3 tbsp coriander seed (you can use coriander powder as well)
1 tsp black peppercorn
4 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
4 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp tamarind (assam) paste
1-1.5kg chicken thighs
500ml of water, or enough to come halfway up to the chicken in the pot
2 tbsp plum sauce (or 1-2 preserved sour plum, chopped roughly)
1 tsp white pepper (optional)
Additional salt and sugar, to taste


Steps

1. Peel the shallots, and chop each shallot into 3-4 smaller pieces. Using a food processor, or a mortar and pestle, break up the shallot into a paste. Set aside.


2. In a small saucepan or frying pan set over low heat, gently warm coriander seeds and black peppercorns until fragrant. No oil is required for this. Remove from heat, let cool and then grind finely.

3. In a large bowl, combine the chopped shallots, coriander seeds, black peppercorns, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, salt and assam paste with chicken. Set aside to marinate for at least 1 hour, or preferably overnight.


4. In a large pot, heat a thin layer of cooking oil over medium-high heat. Scrape the marinade off the chicken pieces (no need to be too thorough on this), then sear the chicken pieces skin-side down, a couple of minutes on each side until browned.


5. Add the rest of the marinade into the pot, and scrape up any fond on the surface of the pot as you do. Add water to the pot until the water level reaches halfway up the chicken. When the water starts to boil, reduce the heat to low just until it is just a low simmer.


6. Continue cooking for about 30 minutes, until the gravy reduced and thickened up. Remove from heat.


7. Add the plum sauce (or plum) and mix well. Add more salt, sugar or white pepper to taste. (If you’ve added too much white pepper and it became too spicy for example, you can balance out the spiciness with sugar, or add a bit of acid from the tamarind or the sour plum.)


8. Serve immediately with rice.