Piyanggang manok

As tradition built it

Serves 4. Marinate 1 hour, cook around 25 minutes.

Ingredients

• 500 g chicken drumsticks
• 120 g pamapa itum (burnt coconut spice paste, see note)
• 15 ml oil
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 240 ml coconut cream
• 120 ml coconut milk
• as available lemongrass, optional
• 15 g red chilli, chopped

Method

1. Coat the chicken thoroughly in the pamapa itum. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour.
2. Heat the oil and sauté the onion and garlic 3 minutes.
3. Stir in the coconut cream, coconut milk, lemongrass and chilli, then add the chicken. Simmer, covered, around 20 minutes, until cooked through and the sauce has thickened.
4. Finish on a hot, oiled grill pan, 1 minute per side, then spoon the gravy back over to serve with steamed rice.

Notes

Pamapa itum is built the same way as tiyula itum's base above: charred coconut, ground fine, pounded together with turmeric, ginger, galangal, lemongrass, garlic and black pepper. No source consulted gives a single canonical ratio for the paste itself; build it to the proportions in the tiyula itum method above and adjust the chilli to taste.

What a modern chef changes

The same fire-then-liquid logic, run on live coals rather than a stovetop pan

Rungs 1, 2 and 3

Method

1. Cook the chicken on a two-zone Big Green Egg fire: indirect first, coated in the pamapa itum, so it cooks through gently while taking on real wood smoke, then finished directly over the coals for the char a stovetop grill pan can only approximate.
2. Blend the reduced coconut sauce in a high-power blender and pass it through a chinois, turning a loose gravy into a genuinely glossy, emulsified glaze that coats rather than pools.
3. Marinate the chicken under vacuum rather than simply covered in the fridge, for faster, more even penetration of the pamapa itum on a tighter timeline.