Again going back to my roots, as you may or may not know I am born to a Chinese father and Iban mother. Tomorrow (1st June) is a hugely celebrated Gawai Festival (Harvest Festival) by local “Dayak” natives in my home state Sarawak, Malaysia. The Iban tribe is one of the main Dayak group of natives and I am proud to be half Iban. Every year, people in Sarawak celebrate Gawai by visiting friends and relatives, drinking lots of tuak (Sarawak Rice Wine), eating lots of amazing local traditional dishes and just partying all night long.
This dish is a traditional Iban dish. Its name “Ayam Pansoh” means chicken cooked in bamboo. The Ibans also cook pork “pansoh” style and call it “Babi Pansoh”. This dish is usually served with “Lemang” which is sticky glutinous rice with coconut, also cooked in a bamboo log. Being in Melbourne and away from family and all of their festivities tomorrow, I thought it was appropriate for me to try and recreate this dish with a few small cooking alterations due to my limited supply of rare ingredients.
Before I go into details of how to recreate this one of a kind dish only found in Sarawak, let me just first and foremost say this has got to be one of my proudest cooking achievements. I was very, very happy with the flavors of this dish and the tenderness of the chicken and the aroma it produced!
Hubby even said “You have possibly invented something people will really, really like Kim”
Although, in all fairness I didn’t “invent” this dish – just altered the cooking style and substituted some rarer ingredients!
I also had a small group of friends over so they had a little taste. They all loved it!
So let’s cut to the chase and find out how to cook this dish ay?
Ingredients:
Banana leaves
1.5kg chicken maryland, chopped into smaller pieces
3 tbsp olive oil
2 stalks lemongrass, stripped and sliced
1 inch cube ginger, julliened
5 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
15-20 Thai Basil leaves
2 red chillies, seeds removed, thinly sliced
1 cup liquid chicken stock
Salt and pepper to taste
Method:
In a large bowl, combine the chicken pieces, olive oil, lemongrass, julienned ginger, chopped garlic, Thai Basil leaves and sliced red chilles. Season well with salt and pepper and mix well. Let the chicken marinate for 30 minutes.
Now here’s the twist… USUALLY, this chicken mixture is stuffed into a bamboo log and sealed with banana leaves at both ends and cooked over a woodfire / charcoal fire…
BUT I have searched and searched and no luck in finding an actual bamboo LOG. The idea is for the log to “trap” the flavors which makes the dish so flavorsome… so what do I do as an alternative, living in a Western country with limited access to rare ingredients such as a whole bamboo log? If I was in China, it would be abundant. But even florists have told me it’s rare to find whole bamboo log these days in Australia…
TADA! I’ve figured if the idea was to “trap” the flavors then what better way to do it than to use my favorite pot in the whole wide world… the tagine!
Place a couple of banana leaves in the tagine to form a base and add the marinated chicken. Pour in the chicken stock.
Cover the tagine and cook over medium low heat for approximately 45 minutes.
(Serving Suggestion based on first picture featured at the start of this blog post)
ENJOY and Selamat Hari Gawai! Gayu Guru Gerai Nyamai 🙂
Kimba's Living 
Kim, that's absolutely awesome!! OMG, I wish I could try it 🙂 immediately! Do you think it would be as good as your one 🙂 if I mis the banana leaves, please – as there's no chance to find any over here?? Thank you 🙂
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Fabulous! I will love to learn more about this culture. It is quite foreign to me. Happy Gawai DAY!
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Hello Mina! I think it might be OK without the banana leaves.. the main flavors come from the marinade of garlic, ginger, chilli, lemongrass and Thai Basil leaves anyway so YES! 🙂
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Wow. I am sitting at the laptop salivating. It's always inspiring to see cooks taking a risk with recipes and flavours. Nice work!
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What a wonderful tradition and a simply gorgeous dish! I want to dig in!
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I have heard of this but never had before…ooo….no need bamboo also can ah…I dont have the “corong” thing …Can use WOk cover?
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wow, what a beautiful dish!! Have a happy holiday!
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that's really creative. 🙂 converting pansoh to tagine!
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Looking at the ingredients, I can imagine how delicious the dish will taste. Happy celebrations!
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Happy celebrations… I've never heard of this.. but that just shows how culturally unaware we are over the other side of Malaysia! Thanks for sharing!
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A belated Selamat Hari Gawai, Kimberly. Love this recipe adaptation – I've actually eaten the actual dish cooked in bamboo by some Iban friends. What a brilliant idea to use that tagine pot, though. I'm so impressed, that chicken dish looked so mouthwatering!
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great use of tagine! i love it. looks yum!
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As a fellow Iban, i am nothing but proud of your willingness to give it a go and from my point of view, it's looking great! Slamat Ari Gawai, Gayu Guru Gerai Nyamai, Celap Lindap Nguan Menua, Bulih Reta Nyadi Raja.
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