Intoxicated…

Now, this is one very simple dish…

…that you may want to try cooking.

Firstly, I marinated the chicken with cincaluk (fermented prawns) – if you are not crazy about the stuff, you may want to substitute that with salt and msg or chicken stock but it does give the dish its very special sweetness and fragrance.

As you can see, my missus had asked to seller at the market to chop up the meat into bite-size chunks and remove all the skin as well – she insists that all the fat is there and it is not healthy to eat that. I also added 4-5 slices of ginger and one serai (lemon grass) that had been cut into shorter lengths and the end was bruised for use…

I did throw in two small chilies too but that would be optional and I need not have bothered as they were not hot at all so much so that they might as well not have been there,

I did not add any water but there would be a bit of it from the meat after having washed it before use. Instead, I poured in some tuak (traditional Dayak ethnic rice wine), around one third of the meat. If you do not have tuak, I would think a good alternative would be the Chinese white wine that is used in cooking kacang ma chicken. Somehow, I have the feeling that the Foochow red wine would not be that compatible if, like me, you are using cincaluk in the dish.

Putting the casserole into the wok, I steamed it for around an hour. This was what it looked like after 30 minutes…

…and as you can see, the soup had already started to fill up in the process of the steaming and you can bet that when it was done, it would be so very nice.

After an hour, it was ready to be served. Now wasn’t that easy? Just mix the meat with the cincaluk, ginger and serai (and chillies), add tuak and steam…and it’s done!…

…and by then, there was a lot more soup to savour. I must say that it went absolutely well with rice and I just had to control myself from going for a second helping. Of course , you may want to add other things to enhance the taste but the main idea of this dish is to come out with something absolutely hassle-free and yet really very delicious.

There was some left over so the following morning, I decided to cook some mee sua and serve it with the soup…

…and boy!!! It was like…WOW!!! So very nice…and I sure wouldn’t mind having that again…and again…except that I’ve run out of the best Bintulu cincaluk. Hint, hint…anybody? LOL!!!

By the way, if you’ve noticed, I’m getting to be pretty good at cooking poached eggs now…

…except that I would have to learn to be more gentle with it – the yolk got exposed a bit. I watched some video clips on how to cook it and I saw that they were not much better – some even resorted to trimming away the uneven white edges with kitchen shears…but no, I’m not running a cafe so I wouldn’t bother to go through such lengths.

Well, as they say, if at first you do not succeed, try and try again…and I did hear somewhere that it is best to marry a teacher – they will make you do it again and again till you get it right. LOL!!!