RECIPE: Coconut and lemongrass roast chicken

Mandy Yin is the owner and runner of the cult London restaurant Sambal Shiok Laksa Bar. Mandy’s life goal is to showcase the exciting variety of Malaysian food: enter Sambal Shiok, her very first cookbook! She hopes that this book will inspire many to cook Malaysian dishes, to seek out and eat Malaysian food wherever the reader is in the world and, finally, to travel to Malaysia to fully understand and experience the richness of its cuisine and culture. Today, we’re featuring Mandy’s recipe for coconut and lemongrass roast chicken.

Happy cooking!

Coconut and Lemongrass Roast Chicken

Serves: 4

The inspiration for this comes from an excellent Malay dish called ayam percik, where chicken is grilled (broiled) over charcoal flames after being marinated in an irresistible coconut and lemongrass sauce. Malaysian-style Nandos if you like! I was asked to write a simple festive recipe for the Observer Food Monthly and thought that this classic Malaysian sauce marinade would work a treat. I chose to use more luxurious duck for my original recipe, but I have converted it to work for chicken which makes it perfect for a Malaysian-inspired Sunday roast. It also works very well simply slathered over some skin-on boneless thighs, left to marinate overnight, and then chucked onto a barbecue! The sauce has a hefty chilli kick, so if you prefer less, simply halve the number of chillies and the amount of sugar.

You will need to start this recipe the night before to allow for marinating time.

Ingredients

1 whole chicken (around 1.6kg/3lb 8oz)

Spice paste
4 lemongrass stalks,
roughly chopped
100g (3½oz) onion, roughly chopped
4 garlic cloves
1½ tsp ground turmeric
4 red chillies, roughly chopped
14g (1½ tsp) shrimp paste (or replace with 2 tbsp fish sauce)
1½ tsp salt
2 tbsp white sugar
2 tbsp oil
120ml (½ cup) coconut milk

Method

The day before you want to cook the chicken, prepare the marinade by blitzing the spice paste ingredients into a fine purée. Put the paste into a saucepan and fry it off over a medium heat, stirring constantly for 5 minutes. Now add the coconut milk, bring to the boil and simmer on the lowest heat for another 10 minutes, stirring often. Turn off the heat. If the sauce is a bit lumpy with bits of chilli or lemongrass, use a handheld blender to blitz it further so that it is smooth. Leave to cool.

Once the sauce is cool, use half of it to smear all over the chicken, including underneath and inside the cavity, then place it in a large roasting tray and put it in the fridge overnight, uncovered, to let the flavours penetrate. Save half of the sauce to baste the chicken the next day.

The next day, take the chicken out of the fridge and let it rest in its roasting tray on the kitchen counter, uncovered, for 2 hours to dry out further and to come to room temperature.

While the chicken is coming to room temperature, preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/400°F/gas mark 6 (fan ovens are particularly effective for roasting meats).

Cover the chicken with foil and place it in the oven to cook for
30 minutes.

Halfway through the cooking time, discard the foil and baste the chicken with the remaining sauce. Roast for a further 30 minutes.

At the end of the cooking time, take the tray out of the oven and transfer the chicken to a board to rest for 15 minutes before carving.

Spoon any excess sauce left in the roasting tray over the chicken just before you dig in.

—Sambal Shiok by Mandy Yin (Hardie Grant Books) is out now.

Sambal Shiok

by Mandy Yin

Sambal Shiok is a brilliant collection of 75 Malaysian-inspired recipes that were handed down from Mandy Yin’s mother as well as those that she has developed for her cult London restaurant. The recipes – such as Malacca Nyonya curry laksa, Penang assam laksa, Malaysian fried chicken, prawn fritters, spiral curry puffs, flaky roti canai, beef rendang, KL golden fragrant clams, sambal mapo tofu, and the perfect steamed rice – can be made for a weekday family meal, a dinner party or celebration...

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