Piaparan

Chicken cooked with dry grated coconut rather than coconut milk, so the sauce stays thick.

Chicken. Not vegetarian — contains chicken, fish sauce.

Ingredients

1.2 kg chicken, in small pieces
250 g freshly grated coconut
2 teaspoons ground turmeric
4 tablespoons palapa
60 g fresh ginger, in matchsticks
8 garlic cloves, chopped
1 onion, chopped
400 ml water
2 tablespoons fish sauce
200 g spinach or moringa leaves
3 tablespoons oil
6 siling labuyo

Method

DRY GRATED COCONUT, NOT COCONUT MILK. The flesh goes in as flesh and stays as flesh, so the finished dish is a thick mass clinging to the chicken rather than a sauce you could ladle. Every ginataang page on this site uses the milk; this is the other way of using a coconut and it gives a completely different plate.
TOAST THE COCONUT FIRST: dry pan, low heat, stirred, 6 to 8 minutes, until it is pale gold and smells nutty. Untoasted it tastes raw and faintly soapy against the turmeric.
If you have no palapa, 4 chopped scallions pounded with 2 tablespoons of grated ginger and 2 chopped chillies stands in, and the dish is different rather than worse.
Fry the ginger, garlic and onion in the oil, 4 minutes. Turmeric in for 30 seconds -- it needs the fat and burns over a bare flame.
Chicken in, turned over 5 minutes until the outside has gone yellow all over.
Palapa in, 2 minutes. Fish sauce, then the water.
Cover and simmer 25 minutes, until the chicken is tender.
TOASTED COCONUT IN FOR THE LAST 10 MINUTES, stirred through, uncovered, so it takes up the remaining liquid. It should end up damp and clinging, not wet and not dry.
Greens and chillies in, heat off, lid on, 2 minutes.
If it looks dry, a few tablespoons of hot water rather than more coconut.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes