Ayam Ponteh

Ayam Ponteh = Chicken Braised in Soybean Paste

This was the dish that I practised and made for a project back in my poly days. Our group needs to prepare a meal for a Peranakan family and this was the dish I'm assigned to cook. This is a repost as I want to consolidate all the different recipes I've tried (and posted in different blogs) here.

I'm not too sure if Babi (pork) Ponteh is the authentic version but some recipes does include pork belly in Ayam (chicken) Ponteh as well. My recipe below only uses chicken.

I did a quick scan via Google for some background info on this dish. Basically, this is a traditional Peranakan dish that has a sweet-savoury taste. Like many other Peranakan dishes, one key step a "rempah". Rempah = a spice paste, formed by pounding various ingredients together using mortar and pestle. My recipe is modified so that it contains less sodium (taucheo used is reduced) and less fats & oil (skin and fats of chicken is trimmed and less oil is used during frying).

01) 1/4 cup cooking oil

02) 30 shallots, peeled and finely pounded

03) 15 cloves garlic, peeled and finely pounded

04) 6 tbsp preserved soy bean paste (tau cheong)

05) 1kg chicken thigh, skin removed

06) 10 dried Chinese mushrooms, soaked in water for 2 hours

07) 1 litre (4 cups) water

08) 3 large potatoes, peeled and quartered

09) 2 tsp thick soy sauce

10) 50g (1/4 cup) sugar

11) spring onion/ coriander leaves as garnish

Step 1:

Peel the potatoes and cut them into quarters. Parboil the potatoes for 10 minutes. Refresh the parboiled potatoes, drain and set aside. (Refresh = rinse hot food in cold liquid - for various reasons such as stopping the cooking process, retain the colour, etc) 

Parboil = Partially cooking food using boiling water

Step 2:

Finely pound the garlic and shallots, set aside

Step 3:

Remove the skin on the chicken thigh and trim off visible fats

Step 4:

In a wok, heat up 1/4 cup of cooking oil. Add in the pounded garlic and shallot until fragrance. Then, add in the preserved soy bean paste (Tau Cheong) and fry the mixture until oil surfaces.

Step 5:

Add the chicken and mushrooms. Stir-fry until well mixed. Add in water and then bring mixture to a boil.

Step 6:

Add in the potatoes and sugar to the boiled liquid and allow mixture to simmer for about 5 minutes, before adding the dark soya sauce.

Step 7:

Simmer for another 5 to 10 minutes after the addition of dark soya sauce (this allows the chicken and the potatoes to pick up the colour of the gravy). Dish is done when the potatoes are soft but still retains its structure.

Step 8:

Garnish and serve with plain rice.

*This recipe serves 6.