Cooking in Spain: The Ultimate Spicy Chicken

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do.

Today, I cooked my favourite dish of all time, Spicy Chicken, in Indonesian, Ayam Sambel. I am so happy of it, so I name it The Ultimate Spicy Chicken.

It has been a long way from my firts attempt cooking this dish in Europe where it is so darn difficult to get asian stuffs. I wrote my first attempt here: Cooking in Denmark: Spicy Chicken. This time, I worked my magic. My magic is my friend. I have a friend from whom I could get in my hands enough asian stuffs to make this dish 95% similar if I were cooking it in Indonesia. I got red chili!!! 🙂

The key of decent living in Europe is being wise in your choice. So, I know by now that frozen chicken are so much cheaper than the fresh ones. And, according to my friend who is studying food science in University of Copenhagen, salmonella will die when the chicken is being frozen. Yes, it is not fresh. But it is not necessarilly unhealthly. So, firstly, I bought this chicken in the cheapest supermarket chain that I knew. Secondly, I took the red chili that I got from my friend. She is from Holland. And as you might know, there are a lot of Indonesian stuffs in Holland because of our long history. The chili, per pack, was as expensive as the 1kg frozen chicken. That was why I said, be wise in making choice. Because for chili I didn’t have a bargaining power. So, I took it anyway. I also prepared half of onion, since I could not find small red onion here (or as we called it bawang merah), one big tomato, 2 cloves of garlic, some salt, some sugar and some sweet soya sauce (this is optional, depends on your taste).

I light-fried all the pieces of the chicken in a pan with vegetables oil (after I defreezed them), just to get all the blood inside the chicken gone, if they were any, just to be sure. But personally, I like it a bit crispy. Then, I used a blender machine (food processor maybe, if you dont have, or mortar) to blend all the ingredients. Red chili, onion, garlic, and tomato, they went all in pieces to the blender. Yes, i cut them all in little pieces before I blended them in the machine. Again, just to be sure I got them all in fine mixture. After that, drop a little vegetables oil before I turned the machine on. After a good 3 minutes. They were ready.

Next, saute the blended ingredients in a pan (a wok is better, but it is almost impossible to get one in Europe) with some leftover oil from frying the chicken. Stir for 20 seconds, then drop a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of sugar and a spoonful sweet soya sauce. Remember, sweet soya sauce, not the salty one, not just soya sauce (since it is usually salty). Stir for another 30seconds. Taste it. Adjust to your taste. This sauce will be the base of my cooking since I didnot put any seasoning to the chicken. So, I usually made sure that the sauce was falvourful and tasty. By the way, I used 10 pieces of red chili, that was why the amount of sugar and sweet soya sauce was quite a lot. After I had the desired taste, enough heat, salt, sweetness, I then put all the chicken inside, and lower the heat. Let it cook for about 2 minutes. Then, stir them all again, making sure all sides of the chicken were covered with the sauce. Taste again. Sometimes, the taste of the sauce changed since it is now becoming thicker. Leave it for 4-5minutes depending on your chicken. Some chicken parts gave more water than other parts. I like it when the sauce thick and dry. But if you like it wet then it is good to go.

Ah. The taste. It is amazing! I feel so happy.

Praise the LORD that I may eat my food with gladness. I might not be the richess person on earth. But just being alive, having warm food, and knowing God is providing all this, made me feel so blessed. Thank you God! 🙂