Caught! Confessions of a Nonya in New York

The lengths one will go for art...one of my friends, a redoubtable cook, who has been putting her mother's recipes together for a Nonya cookbook has been testing recipes for the past year. Her recent visit to Singapore ended climactically at Newark Airport when her precious stash of buah keluak was impounded by the customs officers. To add insult to injury, she has been blacklisted by the customs and her bag accidentally handed over to another incoming Indian family.

The taste of Buah Keluak (Pangium edule) is an acquired one, and afficionados cannot get enough of the complex bittersweet flavour of this unpreposessing nut. Ayam Buah Keluak is one of the prized dishes of a Nonya's repertoire at Chinese New Year. The preparation is tedious, and entails soaking the nut for 3 - 4 days, extracting the dark shiny meat, pounding it with spices and putting it back into the shell to be cooked together in a delectable curry.

My encounters with cooking this nut have not exactly been Nonya in origin (although I am in the process of cooking through Terry Tan and Dorothy Ng's recipes), but I was taught to make Ayam Buah Keluak by my mother and grandmother from Kuching. The flavour is different from the classical Nonya variety, perhaps a little more bitter and less "lemak" or coconutty in flavour.

Here is the recipe (more or less)

AYAM BUAH KELUAK (Kuching Style)
(Serves 8 people)

Ingredients:

1 chicken, weighing about 1½ kg, cut into 16 pieces
20 Buah Keluak, soaked overnight and thoroughly scrubbed with a brush (Soak the nuts for 3 nights, changing the water daily)
50 g minced pork
2 egg whites
4 rounded tbsp of assam soaked in 1 cup of water and squeezed till pulp has dissolved. Strain and keep liquid aside for use. Discard the pulp and seeds
12 slices of galangal with skin scraped off. (1 Inch diameter and 1/2 inch length)
4 cm or ½ thumb length of kunyit (tumeric). (1 thumb length)
2 tbsp of sugar.
1 tsp of salt.
½ cup of oil.

Rempah ingredients
6 buah keras (candlenuts) (3 whole nuts – 6 halved nuts, lends a creamy taste )
30 shallots.
10 fresh red chillies (or 3 tablespoons chilli paste)
1½ tbsp of belachan.
3 stalks of serai (lemongrass)
1 small white onion
4 cloves garlic.

Method:
1. Chip off smooth part of buah keluak at the thicker end and dig out the pulp of the nut. Put aside the empty shell.
2. Clean the pestle and mortar and pound the nut pulp till it is all mashed up. Add the minced pork, 2 tsp of sugar and ¼ tsp salt. Pound again till well mixed. Add the egg whites to bind the mixture together.
3. Fill the shells with buah keluak mixture and keep aside.
4. Peel the shallots and chop finely
5. Slice the red chillies.
6. Clean the serai of any dead fibers and chop coarsely in preparation for pounding later.
7. Pound the buah keras, lengkuas, lemongrass, kunyit, chillies, shallots, onion, garlic adding each ingredient in that order. (I usually use my electric chopper first, then pound with the old-fashioned mortar). Then add the shallots and pound to bind the ingredients. (Add the belachan at the very end after all the others as it makes the mixture turgid and so difficult to mix) The rempah should be as fine as possible.
8. Add ½ cup of oil to the wok. When the oil is hot (after about 30 seconds), add the rempah and fry over moderate heat.
9. Stir fry vigorously for about 2 – 4 minutes. The rempah is cooked if there is an added fragrance, and the mixture changes in colour.
10. Add the chicken pieces and stir fry until the outside is cooked. Then add the buah keluak nuts. Add sufficient water to cover the mixture, bring to a boil and then lower the fire, cover and simmer. The simmering will allow the flavour of the rempah to get into the nuts and the chicken as well as allow some of the nutty flavour to get out into the gravy. Sometimes, you can add some of the pulp straight into the gravy. Add the tamarind/assam, salt and sugar at the very end)
11. Bring to the boil before lowering the heat, and simmer for ½ hour or until the chicken is tender. Look at the wing and if the bone has broken through the skin at the joint, then the chicken is done.