Manok/Ayam Pansuh

As tradition built it

Serves 4 to 6. About 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken, jointed
• 2 stalks lemongrass, bruised
• 1 thumb ginger, sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 torch ginger flower buds (bunga kantan), sliced
• 1 thumb galangal, sliced
• 200g cassava/tapioca shoots (pucuk ubi kayu)
• to taste salt, to taste
• 1 thick, mature bamboo section, one end sealed by a natural node
• enough to plug the opening cassava leaves, to plug the open end

Method

1. Marinate the chicken with the lemongrass, ginger, garlic, torch ginger flower, galangal and salt.
2. Pack the marinated chicken and cassava shoots into the bamboo section.
3. Plug the open end tightly with cassava leaves; no water or oil is added.
4. Prop the bamboo upright over or beside open fire, rotating periodically so the whole culm heats evenly and does not scorch on one side.
5. Cook 30 minutes to an hour, judging doneness by the liquid inside audibly bubbling at the open top and the aroma turning fragrant.
6. Split the bamboo open to serve.

What a modern chef changes

The sealed-vessel mechanism reproduced on a Big Green Egg, with the aromatic loss stated honestly rather than hidden.

Rung 3

Method

1. Line real bamboo sections, if sourceable, with banana leaf rather than cassava leaf, which is not available in the UK; banana leaf holds moisture similarly and is widely stocked frozen by UK Asian grocers.
2. Where bamboo cannot be sourced, wrap the same marinated chicken and shoots tightly in banana leaf and cook indirect on a Big Green Egg, plate setter in, at 120 to 150°C for 45 minutes to an hour, rotating the parcel as you would rotate the bamboo.
3. Say plainly that the bamboo wall's own aromatic contribution is lost this way. This chapter does not pretend cast iron or ceramic reproduces green bamboo's own volatile compounds; the moisture-retention mechanism transfers, the specific perfume does not.