Kacama Chicken

Kacama Chicken is one popular dish in Sarawak and a must-have to serve the confinement mothers after they have given birth.  Today, this dish is commonly cooked and served in any normal Chinese meals for the whole family.  Apart from the Chinese, this dish has also been made popular among the local Dayaks.  However, the methods of cooking this dish differs from one home-cook to another.  Here is my version of cooking this yummylicious chicken dish.....

Ingredients:

• 1 chicken (cut into bite-size pieces) - not in the picture
• 275g chicken feet (clean, cut into half and boiled until almost soft)

• 225g chicken gizzard (clean and halved)

• 1 cup kacama leaves (fry in a pan using low heat until light brown and slightly crispy, smashed using the back of the spatula if the leaves and stems are not too big, if so, then lightly pound with mortar and pestle, but don't over-pound until powder form.

• 250g ginger (peeled, cut into smaller pieces, blended with 1/2 cup of water, squeeze out the ginger juice and separate the juice and pulp)

• 1 1/2 bottle rice wine - the amount used depends very much on individual preference. When cooking for confinement purposes normally no water is added to the chicken except rice wine.  For normal cooking some water can be added, which means slightly less rice wine is used. 

Methods:

• In a low heated wok, fry the ginger pulp (without oil) until dry, fragrant and light brown.  We have to continue stirring as it will stick onto the bottom of the pan. Dish onto a bowl and leave aside for later use.

• In the same wok, re-heat the wok using medium heat, drizzle about 1 tbsp. cooking oil into the wok, swirl the oil over the sides of the wok.
• Add in the chicken pieces, stir-fry until chicken meat has turned white (sprinkle some salt over the chicken when stir-frying to give some seasoning to the chicken), add in the chicken feet and gizzard.  Continue to stir-fry for few more minutes, then add in the ginger juice and 1/2 cup of rice wine, stir to combine and cover with lid to let it simmer until the meat and chicken feet are tender. When simmering if the liquid has evaporated and almost dry, you can either add some water or add in more rice wine, depending on whether you prefer a stronger taste of rice wine or not.
• Add in the ginger pulp, stir to mix and at this point more rice wine needs to be added as the sauce will be soaked up by the ginger pulp.  Always remember, this is a soupy dish, so the dish should not be too dry, and bear in mind that this dish is packed with the flavours and taste of rice wine.
• When the dish is almost done, finally add in the kacama, give it a good stir, again once the kacama is being added the soup will again thickens up, so more rice wine needs to be added to obtain that soupy consistency. 
• After a gentle simmer of about 1 to 2 minutes, off the heat and drizzle some more rice wine over the dish, stir to mix and dish into a serving bowl and serve hot!  The reason for the drizzling of rice wine after the heat is off is because, rice wine when evaporates during cooking looses its wine flavour and taste.

Notes:  

When preparing this dish for confinement purposes the steps differ slightly as well as some of the ingredients:

• no salt is added into this dish
• no water is used to cook this dish except rice wine BUT for some reason if the confinement mother is not able to consume much rice wine, then it is advisable to use boiled water to add into the dish during the cooking process.
• more ginger and kacama is used to cook this dish
• the double-boiling method is used to complete the final cooking of this dish, meaning after stir-frying all the ingredients in the wok, omit the simmering part, dish the half cooked dish into a double boiler and double-boiled until the chicken is fully cooked.

The above tips are handed down from my mum and mum-in-law.  However, in this modern world it is rather doubtful that the younger generation would follow accordingly.