Ayam Pongteh Recipe

It's been another lapse since my last post. Plenty has happened and I have finally graduated from my Masters! So it's time to find new jobs but in the time being, I'm back in my hometown and to fill my days, I've been cooking my heart out. Haha. So today's menu is ayam pongteh and jiu hu char, both being nyonya dishes. I will only share the ayam pongteh recipe here as the jiu hu char (basically turnip, mushrooms, carrots, pork, dried shrimps, dried cuttlefish etc is going to be shared in a separate post). This is a very very easy recipe which you could hardly go wrong with...unless you burnt some of the stuff :S

So here goes...

Ingredients
5 shallots
5 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp sweet bean paste (taucu)
1.5 tbsp of sugar (most people use brown sugar/the big slab of gula melaka where you need to cut them into chunks but since it's not available, I improvised :P)
1 tbsp light soya sauce
2-3 tbsp dark soya sauce
2-3 medium potatoes cut into quarters
5 drumsticks (just the drumsticks and not the thigh)
roughly 2-3 drinking cup of water  

Methods

1) Chop shallots and garlic roughly and then grind them into paste using mortar into some sort of paste.
 2) Mash the taucu a little till the beans are all just paste then mix in the sugar and dark soy sauce + light soy sauce.
3) Heat a drizzle of oil in a skillet and brown the shallots+garlic paste before adding the taucu mixture.

*Be careful you don't burnt them*

4)Add in chicken and potatoes and stir till you get everything covered in the sauce/paste.
5) Add in the water and bring to boil before simmering for about 45minutes until the potatoes and chicken are tender.  

*Garnish with freshly chopped coriander*

NOTE: depending on the brand of soy sauce (dark/light) you use, some adjustments might have to be made. Basically the ayam pongteh that I used to have is more towards a lightly salty but sweet aftertaste in terms of the sauce... so yeah, adjust and tweak with this recipe.