Indonesian recipe - Soto Ayam Ambengan

This is one of my hb's favourite's indonesian dishes. My mum makes it the best and I still cant compete with hers but since my mum cant cook it for us.. I have to learn to cook it, it still tasted pretty good hehe.. except not as original as hers..

In Indonesia, we have so many different type of soto dishes. There's soto daging madura (my favourite..), soto kudus, soto bandung, soto betawi, etc, etc... anyway, here's a description of soto according to the wilkipedia:-

Soto, sroto, tauto or coto is a common dish to be found in various regional variations of Indonesian cuisine. It is a soup mainly composed of broth, meat and vegetables. The meats that are most commonly used are chicken and beef, but there are also variations with offal, mutton, water buffalo meat and pork. The soup is usually accompanied by rice or compressed rice cakes (ketupat or buras). Sotos are commonly differentiated by the meat ingredient in them, e.g. soto ayam (chicken soto) and soto daging (beef soto). Offal is a very common ingredient in soto, and is considered as a delicacy: the rumen (blanket/flat/smooth tripe), reticulum (honeycomb and pocket tripe), omasum (book/bible/leaf tripe) and the intestines are all eaten.

This is my version of soto, which is the soto ayam ambengan and is typically can be found almost in all parts of Indonesia.

SOTO AYAM AMBENGAN - serves 4

Ingredients :

* 1/2 chicken

* 2 stalk of lemongrass stalk

* 5 pieces of lime leaves (jeruk purut) - smashed

* 1 litre water

* 2 t salt

* 30g dry shrimps (fried and blend till smooth)

* 3 small red onion (minced)

Spices to be blend together:

* 4 cloves garlic

* 2 cm yellow ginger

* 1/2 t lengkuas

* 1 t pepper

* 4 pieces of kemiri

Compliment ingredients:

* 200 g so hun (soak with hot water for 5 mins)

* 2 stalk of spring onion

* 2 potatoes (cut in small cubes - fried until browned)

* some shallots

* Beansprout - boiled

* Shredded chicken

* Cabbage - cut thinly and boiled

* 4 boiled eggs

* 1 lime (for garnish)

* sweet soya sauce

* chilli sauce

METHOD:

1) Fry onions, lemongrass stalk, lime leaves for 1 min, add the blended spices, fry for 2 mints, add chicken, lightly fry for another 1 min, add water, boiled until chicken is soft (about 30mins)

2) Take chicken out, shred chicken, leave aside.

3) Served with all the compliment ingredients, pour hot soup over it, garnish with shallots, spring onions, lime juices, sweet soya sauce and hot chilli sauce.