Pandan Chicken, the Lazier Way

Pandan chicken is one popular Thai dish that is loved by many, my family including.  A typical pandan chicken dish would be deep fried chicken that was marinated with a combination of spices and fish sauce wrapped in pandan leaves.   The pandan leaves adds a sweet smelling floral like fragrance to the aromatics used to marinade the chicken.  Really, it's hard not to love this dish. 

The preparation of the chicken is easy, it's the wrapping of the chicken in pandan leaves that requires some effort (time consuming) and mastering.  And the other hassle is the deep frying part, which is also something many of us try to avoid for health reasons apart from the cleaning up after.  

So, to make it easy and healthy, this is what i did this time:-

1. Bigger size chicken pieces, used entire chicken leg
2. Roast instead of fried
3. Laid the chicken on a bed of pandan leaves instead of wrapping it up individually

This is the bed of pandan leaves that the chicken 'slept' on.  The inspiration came from here, i thought it was rather cool to combine art and culinary.   Ok, ok, i have to admit this might not necessarily be less time consuming than wrapping the chicken pieces with a pandan leave!  But it was fun and less messy because you don't have to handle the chicken while doing it.  Besides the kids can help with this too.   And of course it looks pretty doesn't it? I made 3 of these, one to lay the chicken on, one to cover it and one for serving. 

The chicken 'sleeping' on the bed of pandan leaves.  Then covered with another bed and a layer of foil to make sure the chicken remains moist and the fragrance from the pandan gets trapped in and infused into the chicken :)

Brushed with some gravy made from juice collected in roasting pan and served with some chilli sauce.

Recipe
Ingredients

• 3 pieces of chicken leg (deboned and deskinned)

(B) - chop finely (or ground if preferred)

• 30g turmeric
• 2 stalks lemon grass
• 3 shallots
• 2 clove of garlic
• 1 inch knob of ginger

(C) - Seasoning

• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp Worchestershire sauce
• 1 tsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 50ml coconut milk

Steps

1. Cut and chop finely ingredients in Part B.
2. Season chicken with ingredients in Part B and C.
3. Leave chicken to marinade for 2-3 hours.
4. Preheat oven at 250C.
5. Prepare roasting pan by laying pandan leaves on a piece of foil.  Foil has to be big enough to cover chicken.
6. Put another layer of pandan leaves on top of chicken then cover it with aluminium foil.
7. Roast chicken for 30 minutes or until chicken is cooked.
8. This is optional but here's what i did. I made used of juice/oil collected in roasting pan.  Strain the juice into a small pot, then add some water and corn flour to it.  Put it over a small flame and let it come to a boil.  I then brushed the gravy on the chicken and served with some chilli sauce. 

I am submitting this post to Little Thumbs Up "Pandan" event hosted by Joceline @ Butter, Flour & Me, organized by Zoe@ Bake for Happy Kids and Mui Mui @My little favourites DIY