Recipe: Pandan Chicken/Gai Haw Bai Toey

Pandan Chicken!

Watching some cooking show online had stirred up my cravings for pandan chicken and Thai food. Pandan chicken in restaurants is usually rather expensive (just my personal opinion) and a huge plate usually ends up with a heap of pandan leaves and a fairly little amount of chicken. So I searched up the recipe online and tried to make my own pandan chicken at home.

Following the recipes of Amy Beh and RasaMalaysia, I tried to come up with one using whatever ingredients and spices I have in my kitchen. Moving back to home in a few weeks time, I didn’t see the need to buy more seasonings.

So, here’s a mash up of their recipes and using whatever I had in the kitchen:

Pandan Chicken (serves 5-6)

Ingredients:

400g chicken thigh (bones & skin removed)
20 pandan leaves (trimmed & cleaned)
20 toothpicks
Vegetable oil (for frying)

Seasoning:
3 cm           ginger (grated)
2 cloves      garlic (chopped finely or grated)
1 stalk        lemongrass (sliced finely)
2 tbsp         soya sauce
2 tsp           Worchester sauce
1 1/2 tsp    fish sauce
1 tsp           ground tumeric
1/2 tsp       pepper
1/2 tsp       sesame oil
1 1/2 tsp    corn flour
3 tbsp         thick coconut milk

Directions:

1. Slice the chicken thigh into cubes and marinated with all the seasonings except coconut milk and leave it to stand for at least 3 hours.

2. Clean the pandan leaves, trimming the ends and wipe the water off with a clean dry cloth or kitchen towel.

3. Add in the coconut milk and mix well.

4. Place 2-3 cubes of chicken at 3-4 cm from end of the pandan leaf. Bring the end of the leaf in to form a cone shape and wrap the pandan leaf around to form a triangular shape. Secure with a toothpick.

A few messy pandan chicken that I've wrapped up for frying

4. Heat up a pot of oil and fry the pandan chicken in batches until it is cooked thoroughly.
TIP: Test if the oil is hot enough by placing a chopstick into the oil. If there are bubbles around the oil, the oil is hot enough for frying.

Be ready for some splattering of oil (I had to mop my entire kitchen after frying)
The fragrance of the pandan chicken will fill up your entire kitchen.

With the ingredients above, I manage to make 19 pieces of pandan chicken. Being a little impatient, I only let my chicken marinate for over an hour before cooking them. They are still tasty but it could definitely be better if I had leave them in the marinate for a longer period of time. Though sceptical about adding coconut milk into the chicken, it actually made the chicken much more fragrant.

Apologies for the horrible explanation on how to wrap the chicken. Check out the videos on Youtube on how to wrap the pandan chicken.

ENJOY! :D

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