Ayam Buah Keluak.... Yummy

This is the most amazing plant that I know of. Its fruits are so poisonous and yet they are eaten as delicacies from Southeast Asia to the Pacific Islands. I am talking about Pangium edule. Locally, we know the fruits of this plant as Buah Keluak, and the seeds are used as a significant ingredient in the nonya dish - Ayam Buah Keluak.
There is an old tree in the botanical gardens in Singapore. It flowers and bears fruits regularly, but in small quantities. The fruits are like papayas, but are harder, more rough-textured and more brown. Inside the fruit, embedded in yellow pulp are the large seeds. Each seed has a hard shell.

The raw seeds taken from the fruits are highly poisonous. Native people apparently have found ways to detoxify the seeds before consuming them. One way apparently, is to boil the seeds without their shells in several changes of water before leaching them in flowing streams or rivers for a few days. Another way is to boil the seeds with the shells intact and then burying the boiled seeds in ash for over 40 days. The seeds that we can buy in our markets in Singapore are apparently detoxified by the latter method.

After being processed by soaking in running stream water and smoking for weeks, the colour darkens. its now edible ! the processing is done in indonesia, where majority of the nuts come from. Remember if the nuts are not dark and look like the picture above, DON'T EAT IT.

In my family, Ayam Buah Keluak is usually a special dish and i usually prepare it for our reunion dinner during the Chinese New Year celebrations. This is because of its intensive and time consuming manual scrubbing, peeling, pounding, frying andboiling!

My family has our own unique style of buah keluak! compared to the ones on sale in town, ours is very fragrant and tasty because of its presiced mix of buah keluak, spices and meats.

Cooked Buah keluak....Yummy ...

I have been cooking with this recipe for years and when ever i serve it, its yummy all the way ! i have even had comments that its the best buah keluak they have had ever eaten!

Ayam buah keluak as we all know is a very difficult dish to prepare. personally it takes about a whole day to prepare, not including soaking and scrubbing the nuts that take a week!!!

I usually start of by soaking the nuts in grand mothers 'kiam neng ang' which is filled with rain water collected from the gutters! from then , its scrub scrub scrub... I have tried to use shortcuts in preparing this dish and found out that the full flavour doesnt come out as compared to the traditional way, thus its manual work all the way, from peeling the shallots to pounding the rempah. I use only top grade fresh ingredients so the flavours are pure and full flavoured.

This is how rempah is made traditionally!

The outcome of the labor shows when you take the first mouth full of buah keluak with steamy hot rice! Yummy.

please call or email me for orders of this yummy family dish! I need at least one week to get the dish started.

Photos courtesy from:
http://www.nparks.gov.sg/
http://www.foodlah.com/
www.mykitchensnippets.com/
http://www.flavours.com.sg/