How to make fried chicken sandwiches with acar slaw and sambal belacan
- Give fried chicken a Southeast Asian twist with spicy vegetable pickle
- The sambal belacan can be home-made or bought in jars
The marinade for these fried chicken sandwiches couldn’t be easier, but the slaw takes a little work. Acar is a Southeast Asian vegetable pickle, and every cook has their own recipe.
This one is made with ground aromatics that include chillies, shallots, garlic, galangal and turmeric, which are cooked with dried belacan (fermented shrimp paste), mustard seeds and tamarind pulp, before being mixed with salted cabbage and carrot.
While traditional cooks would use a mortar and pestle to pound the mixture of spices, it’s much easier to grind them in a high-speed blender.
Sambal belacan and coconut milk fried chicken sandwiches with acar slaw
Candlenuts can be difficult to source – look in shops specialising in Malaysian-Singaporean-Indonesian ingredients, where you’ll also find the belacan, sambal belacan and other ingredients. You can substitute macadamia nuts.
If you can’t find fresh galangal, use the juicy lower part (about 8cm) of a lemongrass stalk. Lightly crush the length of the stalk, then slice it as thinly as possible before grinding with the other aromatics.
Boneless chicken thighs are not always easy to find – shops usually sell boneless legs, with the drumstick attached. I buy bone-in thighs and remove the bones myself; it takes less than a minute for each one.