I had a couple of big chicken legs in the fridge, so I decided to do Ayam Percik with them, which I have not cooked for some time now.

It is one of those no fuss dishes. Make a paste of garlic and ginger, add salt, rub in and leave to marinate for an hour or more.

The sauce for basting is made from ground dried chilli, shallots, ginger, shrimp paste, plus coconut milk, flour and tamarind juice. Just boil for 10 minutes or so then add sugar and salt.

Dip the chicken legs into this sauce, grill or broil, and use the remaining sauce to baste frequently.

I like to broil under moderate heat to ensure these big legs cook through without charring the outside too early, then raise the rack to the top level for 3 minutes a side to crisp them up.

I served them with rice and a soup of baby Bok Choi and carrots, for which I used the pork stock I had made previously, enriched with chopped tomatoes, shallots and garlic.

Nice, though it was suggested that having the chicken with Ulam style vegetables and perhaps a side of sambal belacan or Indonesian style sambal terasi might have been better.

Certainly something to bear in mind for the next time.

Update 5th September, 2008 - Ayam Percik Article and Recipe 

It’s been a while since I made my version of a Dagwood Bumstead sandwich, and I missed that. Though, just like Dagwood, no 2 are ever the same!This time, one serving needed 3 slices of whole-wheat bread, toasted & buttered, 1 fried egg, 2 slices ham lightly browned, assorted salad leaves, 1 tomato sliced thinly, and mustard.

Lay 1 slice of bread down, add 1 layer salad leaves, 1 slice ham, dash of mustard, 2 slices tomato, 1 slice bread, 1 layer salad, 1 fried egg, 2 slices tomato, 1 slice ham, dash of mustard, 1 layer salad and top with 1 slice bread. There you have it, a triple-decker sandwich. Cut into 2 or 4 if you want easier handling. Add additional layers of salad if you wish, no hard and fast rules.

That was good to last till evening. For dinner, I still had 1 pack of the jumbo chicken legs left, so I did an Indonesian style Chicken Grilled with Chilli. I made sure to slide some of the paste under the skin, before grilling and basting with the rest. Served with rice and raw vegetables, Indonesian Nasi Ulam style, it made a great meal.

There are probably as many Thai Grilled Chicken recipes as there are shops selling this food. Actually, probably even more. So if you are starting from a recipe, it does not hurt to look at more than one, and be willing to experiment.

I did just that last night and it turned out to be pretty nice. A couple of weeks ago I was at the Villa Supermarket on Soi Thong Lo in Bangkok, and I can across this pack of 2 chicken legs, that instantly caught my eye - it must have been a pretty big chicken! Checked a bit and there were 2 packs similarly sized, so bought both of them.

Anyway, back to the food. One recipe calls for marinating in coriander root, lemongrass, ginger, pepper, curry powder (???), sugar and enough light soya sauce to drown anything. The other calls for coriander root, garlic, sugar and a reaonable amount of light soya sauce. Bit bland.

So, I combined the 2, and had coriander root, ginger, lemongrass, garlic, pepper, sugar and a reasonable amount of soya sauce. Plus I added a tablespoon of oil into the marinade to be safe. Used a fork to stick many holes into the still slightly frosty chicken leg - that way the hole remains open as the tissue does not spring back right away. Put the legs plus marinade into a large ziploc, rubbed it well in and held in the fridge for 6 hours.

Grilling took about 5 minutes longer than normal - these were big legs.

Taste was great. We had it with some left over Malaysian style chilli paste that I had made for another recipe last weekend, raw vegetables (tomatoes, carrots and cabbage), and steamed rice. It tasted so good we forgot about the Thai style sweet sauce that usually goes with this.

Comment as the bones were being picked clean - “Wow, I can get the taste all the way down to the bone”.

That was a nice meal.