Manok Pansoh - Sarawak MFF #1

1st attempt

Hello everybody it's the time for MFF again! And for this month it's Sarawak!
Don't forget to drop by Yummy Little Cooks for last month's roundup for Melaka

For Sarawak, I'll be doing 4 tribal recipes, hehehe.

If one were to ask the Ibans of Sarawak, what is the most famous food from their community, they'll answer you it's manuk pansuh/manok pansoh. Manuk is chicken and pansuh is cooking in bamboo. The Bidayuh tribe will instead call this as "Siyok Buruu". I do know that cooking in bamboo is also practised by other aboriginal peoples of the world, and have even seen a similar "orang asli" recipe in the Pahang Sultanah's cookbook.

1st attempt

I have been anxiously waiting for Raya. I'm not a muslim, and my fellow muslim friends celebrate it. One of their festive delicacy is Lemang. And Lemang is bamboo rice. Lemang = bamboo, bamboo= pansuh, hahaha! I love Raya :)

One my my hubby's employee, Kak Su owns a bamboo bush and they do cut and sell for this festive season. I asked her to pass to me those that are too short to be sold. She gave me 5 :) But before hers got to me, I bought 2 at the farmer's market, big and fat, customized the length in situ because the Pakcik had a saw with him. Normally bamboo for lemang is 2ft long, minimum. Some even reach 1 meter long. And when this pakcik saw me buying, he got really curious and asked me whether I want to make a coin bank with the bamboo I bought from him, LOL. I told him, I'm going to cook with it. His eyes went big, so did the makcik beside him. LOL.

1st attempt

I actually made manuk pansuh twice with 2 different recipes and temperature.

First recipe
Manuk Pansuh

Recipe reference: Hunter's Food
Method for baking : Kuali.com

1 free range chicken (850gm)
2 lemon grass
6 shallots
4 cloves of garlic
Toe sized ginger (25gm peeled weight)
10 black peppercorns
1 ¼ tsp salt
1 turmeric leaf (if small use 2)

Cassava shoots for stuffing
Bamboo (1 ft long cavity, 3 inches wide)


1. Wash and soak bamboo with water.
2. Chop chicken into small pieces.
3. Grind/pound shallots, garlic, ginger, peppercorns into a paste.
4. Cut lemongrass into 2 inch pieces and pound them flat.
5. Slice turmeric leaf into 5mm thick pieces.
6. Rub salt, lemongrass, turmeric leaf and the paste onto chicken. Let it sit for 1 hour.
7. Preheat oven to 130C(fan)/150C.
8. Drain water from bamboo.
9. Stuff the chicken into the bamboo and pour in some water, until it fills 2 inches to the top.
10. Stuff the bamboo with cassava shoots.
11. Bake for 30mins or until you see liquid dripping from the bamboo.
12. Pour contents into a deep dish and serve.

1st attempt

Verdict:
I can't smell the bamboo. A bit dissapointed. It tasted like ginger steamed chicken without any special bamboo fragrance. I blame it on the baking for the lack of it. My hubby said this tasted like a confinement dish.
The shallots, ginger or whatever actually smelled raw, tasted raw, although the chicken is overcooked (overcooked I blame myself because I didn't know how to see the doneness and cooked it for 1 hour as read from this site ) My bamboo was dripping drops of water and not gurgling, so I didn't know that's a sign.
You know how sometimes steamed chicken will still have its condiments tasting a bit raw even though the chicken is cooked. That sort of taste. The temperature just isn't high enough, even though I used a higher temp than what I saw.



Left: 1st attempt, Right: 2nd attempt



I wasn't very impressed with the first attempt. I knew what went wrong. And I made it another time with the bamboo given to me my Kak Su. Smaller in size, so I used 2 pieces of bamboo to cook for a meal. I also made some modifications as in I added sugar to balance with the ginger, added chilli, used less turmeric leaf, marinated the chicken with water added and most of all, added in some mushrooms (refered here). I skipped the cassava shoot stuffing, I know that is not that right, don't shoot me for it.

2nd attempt

2nd Recipe

Manok Pansoh
Recipe source: WendyinKK

500gm chicken
50gm shallots
25gm garlic
25gm ginger
5 inches lemon grass
¾ tsp salt
¾ tsp sugar
2 bird’s eye chilli
100gm oyster mushroom
1 small turmeric leaf (6 inches long)
¾ cup water

1. Wash and soak bamboo with water.
2. Chop chicken into small pieces.
3. Grind/pound shallots, garlic, and ginger into a paste.
4. Cut lemongrass into 1 inch pieces and pound them flat. Pound bird's eye chilli flat too.
5. Slice turmeric leaf into 5mm thick pieces.
6. Rub salt, sugar, lemongrass, turmeric leaf, chilli and the paste onto chicken. Mix with water. Let it sit for 1 hour.
7. Preheat oven to 220C(fan)/240C.
8. Drain water from bamboo.
9. Tear mushroom into small pieces and stir into the chicken.
10. Stuff the chicken into the bamboo
11. Bake for 15mins or until you see liquid dripping from the bamboo.
12. Pour contents into a deep dish and serve.

2nd attempt

Verdict:
I loved no2 better. The sugar and mushrooms added a more balanced flavour to it. I prefer the heat from chilli compared to pepper. And less turmeric leaf was more acceptable to my husband and less turmeric leaf also allowed us to savour other flavours better. The ginger, shallots and garlic didn't taste raw this time and maybe the high temp baking really did work wonders to 'sweeten' those aromatics. The overall experience was delicious and nice and the smell was way better. 220C seems high, but to roast a chicken(exposed), you do need such a temperature to bring the chicken to smell good, activate the "fats" and get the bamboo smelling good. It's like a high temperature browned chicken prior to low temperature roasting does make the chicken smell a lot more heavenly, right?

Since it's still Raya month, pop by a lemang stall and ask for a piece of bamboo, get home and try making this. I've seen bamboo sections in Jusco too last week. Not sure if it's still available now.  If you bought lemang, maybe you can recycle the bamboo :p

If I were to make this again, I'll try it with daun bungkang (daun salam) and see how different is the taste.

1st attempt

I am submitting this to Malaysian Food Fest,
Sarawak Month hosted by Sharon of Feats of Feasts