This soup reminds me of how my mom used to cook chicken soup. She would serve the chicken still with its bones, unlike me who used to separate the chicken from the bones and shred it before serving it on the dining table. In this way, my son would easily eat the soup since he didn’t like chicken with bones. But as he grows older now and he doesn’t have difficulty eating chicken still with bones, I decided to cook the soup this way.
Klaten is a small citi in Central Java, Indonesia and just 3 hours drive from Semarang (the capital city of Central Java where I was born). One of the dish that is very famous from that city is the chicken soup. The difference with other chicken soup is that originally, the soup is not served with carrot or potatoes or other vegetables that are usually added in a soup. A bowl of chicken soup is only consist of chicken, few cuts of celery, and fried shallot. But this time, I cooked this with extra veggies such as carrot, potato, and spring onion.
Basically, it is no difference than basic chicken soup, only this time we will make the garlic and onion into a paste first before fry it in a cooking pan until fragrant. Also, add cinnamon and clove to strengthen the flavor. Adding dry shrimp powder is also a good as a replacement of MSG.
The smell of the soup was soooo…………… good and the broth also tasted very delicious and refreshing. It is a suitable dish to have if you’re down with cold like me.
Ingredients:
- 1 chicken, cut 12
- 1 large red onion or 8 red onions
- 10 garlic
- 1/2 large onion (bawang bombay), minced
- 1 thumb of ginger, cut in thin slices
- 1 cinnamon (kayu manis)
- 4 cloves(cengkeh)
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg powder
- 1 tsp dry shrimp powder
- 2 tbsp of salt
- 1 tbsp of olive oil or cooking oil
- 2.5 L water
- 5 carrots, cut in round thin shape
- 2 potatoes, cut into bite size
- 20 spring onion, minced pr cut into 1 cm length
- celery leaves from 3 stalks of celery
Method:
- In a food processor, process garlic and red onions until they form a paste
- Heat a pan with 1 tbsp of olive oil and add the paste of garlic and red onions, minced large onion, ginger, cinnamon, and clove until fragrant
- Add the chicken and toss the chicken until it fully covered in the paste. Turn off the heat
- Boil 2.5 L water in a big pot, then turn to low heat. Add the chicken and all other ingredients in the pan to the pot. Add nutmeg powder, dry shrimp powder, and salt to the pot. Let the chicken cook for 2 hours (for kampong chicken which needs more time to cook) or until the chicken is tender. The water should remain only 2/3 of its original amout at this time
- Once the chicken is tender, add carrots and potatoes and cook until the vegetables are all cooked, then turn off the heat
- Add spring onion and celery leaves and cover the pot for 5 minutes
- Serve the soup hot with steam rice
