Soto Ayam (Indonesian Chicken Soup)
Servings: for three
Autumn is coming as the rain drops and the wind chills. I decide to welcome it by cooking Soto Ayam, a type of Indonesian chicken soup with a punch of spices. The defining spices in this soup are coriander, cumin and tumeric. Savoury and clean, sweet and sour, the soup should be extremely fragrant and deeply satisfying.
I put together this recipe from a collection found in the internet. But mostly, it comes from here.
Ingredients:
200 g chicken breast fillet, thinly sliced
1 litre chicken stock
a thumb of ginger, smashed
2 bay leaves
3 lime leaves, crunched
a piece of scallion, green part only, smashed
4 shallots, finely sliced
2 potatoes, cut into triangular bite-sized pieces or thinly sliced
Salt to taste
Oil for frying
Paste:
3 cloves garlic
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
5 candle nuts
2 cm tumeric
1 cm galangal
1/2 tsp black pepper
Toppings:
3 hard-boiled eggs
Bean sprout, blanched, as desired
Rice noodle (beehoon), cooked, as desired
Condiments:
Lime sections
Sweet-soy sauce
Chili sauce
Fried shallots
Directions:
Heat a non-stick pan and dry-fry the candle nuts until fragrant and slightly crispy in low heat. Add cumin, coriander, and black pepper to the hot pan. Watch carefully and fry until fragrant. Remove them. Add the tumeric and galangal and warm then remove them.
Heat oil into the same pan and fry the potato slices until cooked. Salt and set aside on a piece of kitchen paper.
Meanwhile, make the paste by pounding the ingredients starting from the driest: pound cumin, coriander, and black pepper until coarse, then add, ensuring that each ingredient turns into paste before the next one is added, in this order: candle nuts, galangal, garlic, and tumeric.
Fry the paste gently in oil until cooked and fragrant. Add the shallots and ginger and fry further. Do not let them burn. Add the chicken stock, bay and lime leaves. Scrape the pan to incorporate the stuck paste. Bring to boil.
Pour in the sliced chicken and switch off the fire. The chicken pieces should be cooked immediately and we don’t want them to be dry and stringy.
Arrange rice noodles, bean sprout and eggs in a bowl. Pour in the pipping hot soup and serve with the condiments.
