Piyanggang manok
Chicken grilled and then simmered in a paste of coconut burnt to actual charcoal and ground.
Chicken. Not vegetarian — contains chicken, fish sauce.
Ingredients
- 1.4 kg chicken, halved or quartered
- 300 g freshly grated coconut
- 400 ml coconut milk
- 2 teaspoons ground turmeric
- 3 lemongrass stalks, finely chopped
- 60 g fresh ginger, chopped
- 10 garlic cloves
- 2 onions, chopped
- 2 tablespoons fish sauce
- 6 siling labuyo
- 2 tablespoons oil
Method
- THE COCONUT IS BURNT TO ACTUAL CHARCOAL, not toasted. Dry pan, medium heat, stirred constantly for 15 to 20 minutes, straight past gold and brown and on until it is BLACK and smells of smoke rather than of coconut. The site has two other burnt-coconut dishes and this is the furthest of the three: piaparan stops at pale gold, kulawo chars the flesh over a flame, and this one is taken to black in the pan.
- It will look and smell burnt, because it is. That is the dish, and the finished sauce is genuinely black.
- Grind the blackened coconut to a paste with the garlic, ginger, lemongrass and half the onion, adding a few tablespoons of coconut milk to let the blades work.
- GRILL THE CHICKEN FIRST, over a medium heat, 6 minutes a side, until the skin is charred in patches and the fat has started to run. It does not need to be cooked through -- that happens in the sauce.
- Fry the remaining onion in the oil, 4 minutes. Turmeric in for 30 seconds.
- Black paste in, 4 minutes, stirred, until it has darkened further and the oil begins to separate at the edges.
- Coconut milk and fish sauce in. Chicken in, skin up, pushed down so it is half submerged.
- Covered, low, 30 minutes, turning once, until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce has thickened round it.
- Chillies in for the last 5 minutes.
- Taste. If it is bitter rather than smoky, the coconut went past charcoal into ash, and a spoonful of fish sauce and a squeeze of calamansi is the best that can be done.
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