Chicken Braised in Coconut and Tomato Sauce
The classic braised chicken with the subtle aromatics of tropical cooking behind it.
The step that makes the difference is the reduction: the chicken comes out of the pot and the cooking liquid is boiled hard until it halves. Left as it is, the sauce would be thin and the coconut would disappear into it.
And the coconut goes in after the reduction, never before. Boiled hard for forty minutes it loses its perfume entirely — added at the end it is still there on the plate.
Ingredients
- 1 chicken, cut into 8 pieces
- 50 g butter
- 1 onion, quartered
- 1 red bell pepper, in strips
- 1 green bell pepper, in strips
- 2 cans plum tomatoes
- 300 ml hot chicken stock
- 2 tbsp shredded coconut
- 2 tbsp coconut milk
- A drizzle of sunflower or corn oil
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Method
- 1
Searing: in a large pot over medium heat, melt the butter and brown the seasoned chicken pieces well. Once they have good color, take them out and set them aside on a plate.
- 2
Return the pot to the heat, add a drizzle of oil and cook the quartered onion with the red and green pepper strips until they start to soften.
- 3
Braising: return the chicken pieces to the pot with the two cans of chopped tomatoes, the hot stock, a pinch of salt and pepper. Lower the heat to minimum, cover and cook slowly.
- 4
Reduction: take the chicken pieces out and keep them warm on a platter. Raise the heat and let the cooking liquid reduce with the vegetables until it halves in volume.
- 5
Add the shredded coconut and the coconut milk to the reduced sauce. This goes in at the end, not before — boiled hard the coconut loses its perfume. Return the chicken for a couple of minutes to warm through, and serve the pieces well covered in the sauce.
Chicken
Chicken is the wild card of everyday cooking: it stretches, it is cheap and it takes almost any technique. These are the recipes where it stops being a fallback and becomes the dish — stuffed, pan-fried, braised, with sauces built to keep it juicy instead of dry.
