Opor Ayam is a traditional dish of celebration at Eid ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, or Lebaran as it is called on Java. Some recipes for this widespread dish include tumeric, while some do not, but without it the dish is grey in colour and less celebratory, to my eyes. Opor Ayam is not particulary hot, but it is very rich, with a balance of sweet, spicy, and sour. Very tender chicken is achieved here by simmering the pieces without first browning, simmering gently, and simmering until just done. I use only dark meat parts rather than the traditional whole jointed chicken, because that neatly eliminates the problem of dark and light meat finishing at different temperatures. It is important to skin the chicken, in order to let the spices penetrate the meat, and because too much rendered fat in the sauce makes a rich sweet curry taste quite flabby. Kaffir lime leaves add lovely floral notes over the dish, and it really is just not the same without them. They are sold frozen at Asian groceries and they keep forever that way. In Java, this curry is thickened with kemri nuts, which are hard to find here (and a tad poisonous when raw), and while macadamia nuts are a good substitute, consider them optional if you need a nut-free curry.
Accompany with a vegetable dish and white rice. Pair with water, or a Loire chenin blanc.
Opor Ayam
forty-five minutes;serves four
4 macadamia nuts (optional), diced
1 Tbsp coriander seed
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp oil
4 shallots, diced
1/2 tsp tumeric
14 oz (400ml) coconut milk
1 cinnamon stick
1 lemongrass stalk, bruised
3 kaffir lime leaves
1 tsp palm sugar (may substitute 1 tsp brown sugar)
1/2 tsp salt
3 lbs chicken legs and/or thighs, jointed and skinned
1 Tbsp tamarind juice (may substitute 2 tsp lemon or 1 Tbsp lime juice)
1. Grind the macadamia nuts, coriander, garlic and tumeric to a paste in a mortar.
2. In a large heavy pot with a tight-fitting lid, gently sweat the shallots in the oil over medium heat, until soft.
3. Add the paste to the pot and mix it into the hot oil.
4. Add the coconut milk to the pot and stir to dissolve the spices. Add the cinnamon, lemongrass, lime leaves, sugar and salt. Carefully bring to a simmer.
5. Add the chicken and return to a simmer. Place the lid on and cook for ten minutes. Turn all the pieces and replace the lid to cook another ten. Turn the pieces again and simmer another five minutes. Check that your chicken is done, which it probably is.
6. Off heat add the tamarind juice, stir through, taste the sauce, and adjust for salt, sugar, and acid (tamarind).
mmmm i looove coconut chicken curries! I blogged about three chicken coconut-based curries at least, and also about a courgette and coconut milk curry. I guess I’m just nuts fod coconuts! :D This one looks really intersting, too! Bookmarked!
Just one question, what’s the recipe source?
Source? Hard to say. Nothing stands out, although my recipe is very derivative. Sources: the internet, books, repeat trials in my kitchen. For this one, Ramadan was approaching, so I picked a big island in a big Islamic country and researched Ramadan foods there. Once I had a name for a dish, opor ayam, I found a pile recipes with google, and one in a curry cookbook published in the seventies that I had bought at charity shop for £1. They were all the same but all different, too. I made notes and compiled a trial recipe, a best-guess aggregate based on what I believed to be true about chicken, about coconut milk, about curries, about Java. Then I adjusted for what the Chinese grocery next door carried in stock. Then I made it three times and turned it loose on the world.
The foods I show here are traditional home-style folkloric foods, with classical forms but not definitive versions. Plus, I do a lot of substitutions, by necessity, sometimes with no precedent I can find. Typically I review at least a dozen recipes for any post, to get a sense of what’s required for a recipe to be “authentic” and what’s open to artistic interpretation. Multiple sources are always critical for internet research; so much out there is “wikiality.” I also find that sites and books about the food culture and agriculture of a people helpful, and so are party-snaps on flickr. Often my biggest problem is finding good sources in English. And, while I try to be faithful, I do have my own opinions about cooking, completely unrelated to and unswayed by ethnography. I’d say my research to cooking to photography ratio is 4:2:1. Which tells you that I need a better camera.
I haven’t visited many of these places, and I live in absolute terror that someone will come by to tell me that I got it all wrong. And it’s bound to happen someday. So far, expats have been very kind.
I love coconuts, too, except for the actual cracking of them.
I’m very impressed, Catherine :) .
Authenticity is a tricky thing, if we consider the extent to which cuisines are influenced by one another, and also the fact that a lot of cooks like to add a personal touch to a dish… With this in mind, it’s difficult to be too strict about this. Also, when people write recipes, they often leave out what is normal and everyday to them in terms of methods, or timings, e.g. ‘fry the onions’ – without actually saying what the ending result needs to be. One needs to read a few recipes like you do (and I do the same), to get a more rounded picture.
“fry the onions:” I see that all the time. That’s where I rely on my own sense of best practices for things like stewing, braising, stir-frying. Not everybody who posts a recipe is a culinary school instructor. What cut of meat? What oil? How long? My research for Egusi soup was like that, and I still don’t know if I got it right.
But I believe that these vague recipes are also the recipes that can give us the most honest picture of people’s food, because it’s so obviously spontaneous and not at all self-conscious. I try to work with these sources the hardest.
hi, i just came by your website when i was searching for opor ayam recipe. from what i know (i’m indonesian of javanese descent), opor does not use turmeric. when it has turmeric, it’s called as kari (curry) and of course there is other ingredient added too such as cumin. when i need to use candlenut in other indonesian dishes, i sometimes substitute it with almond meal since it does not have strong aroma, like macadamia.