Chicken with Pandanus Leaves

Every time I go to Thailand, I order this wonderful chicken, flavored with pandanus leaf. The pandanus leaf is actually the leaf of a palm tree and is not eaten. It is widely used in Thai cuisine for its fragrance. It has a very particular smell when it is crushed or cooked. But don’t panic! This recipe is excellent on its own. If you can’t find the leaves, you can marinade the chicken and cook it in a very hot wok or pan. My main concern with this recipe was to find the recipe for the dipping sauce. Easy to find in the supermarket in Bangkok, but impossible, even in the 13th in Paris, so I wanted to clone this sauce. My version will give you exactly the same thing. I couldn’t even tell mine from the bottle I bought there. Don’t wait any longer to cook this delicious dish. I gave this recipe to students in one of my cooking workshops and everyone loved it!

Recipe for chicken with pandanus leaves:

-5 chicken thighs
-30 pandanus leaves
-5 coriander roots (or the stems of a bunch of coriander)
-1 heaping teaspoon of ground black pepper
-3-4 cloves of garlic
-3 tablespoons of chopped lemongrass (2 stalks of lemongrass)
-3 tablespoons of sugar
-2 tablespoons of clear soy sauce
-4 tablespoons of oyster sauce
-4 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil
-2 teaspoons of white sesame

For the dipping sauce:
-155g of sugar
-65g of whole cane sugar
-60g of glucose syrup
-100g of water
-20g of dark soy sauce
-1 level teaspoon of salt
-white sesame (to sprinkle on the sauce)

Start by preparing the sauce (in which you dip the chicken pieces).
Put the ingredients: sugar, wholemeal sugar, glucose syrup, dark soy sauce.

Stir, add water and place over moderate heat.

Bring the sauce to 110°C.

Set sauce aside and let cool. If the sauce is too thick, you can add a little water to thin it out.

Bone the chicken thighs and remove the skin. Then cut into 6 smaller pieces.

Here is the coriander root, but it is becoming difficult to find…

In this case, you can replace them with the stems of a bunch of coriander.

Put the black pepper in a mortar.

Add garlic and coriander stems.

Mash to a paste.

Prepare the lemongrass (on the picture, there is much more than the recipe, trust this one!!). Simply remove the base and top of the stem.

Then chop finely with a knife. Add the lemongrass to the mortar.

Always mash vigorously to obtain a paste.

All this can be done in a mini-mixer…!

Add the paste to the chicken pieces.

Add the clear soy sauce.

Sugar.

Oyster sauce.

And white sesame (not toasted!).

Let the chicken marinate for at least an hour or overnight, it will be even better!

You can prepare the folding with the leaves before the meal and fry at the last moment.

Wash and sort the pandanus leaves. Cut with a pair of scissors the base and the point in bevel.

Fold the first third of the sheet as shown in the photo.

Fold the other side into a triangle.

Turn the sheet over. There is then a small receptacle for the chicken…

Put a piece of chicken in the leaf.

Fold the right side over the chicken.

Then, still with the same sheet, go around the bottom and tuck the tip under the first fold.

Pull and tighten as for a tie knot. Do the same for all the chicken. This is actually very easy!

Put oil in a pan (at least 8cm) or a wok. When the oil is reasonably hot, put in a few leaves topped with chicken.

Fry for 5 minutes, stirring from time to time without undoing the knot, to cook the whole leaf. The whole thing is cooked when the leaf changes color.