One of Minahasa cuisine is chicken bamboo. Appropriate with its name, chicken meat was cooking in bamboo and roasted. Chicken bamboo made from chopped chicken meat. The chopped sizes depend on chicken size, usually 18 – 20 pieces. Chopped meat washed and mixed with spices, such as ¼ kg of small chili (Capsicum frutescens L.) and big red chili, 5% of small chili quantities.Others spices/condiment are ½ kg of ginger, turmeric (finger size) to give color to food, ¼ kg of lemongrass, and 2 kg of onion leaves to give sweet taste and become others spices balancing, so we do not need MSG anymore. Pandanus leaves, basil leaves, lime leaves, and turmeric leaves gave aromatic sense to this cuisine.
After wrapped with condiment, chopped chicken sautéing in high temperature in wide-mouthed clay pot until half cooked. This proceeds made chopped chicken really ripe.
Then chopped chicken put in bamboo (space between joints), closed with banana leaves. Bamboo which used was special bamboo, called tali bamboo with green color.
After that the bamboo roasted on fire from wood and coconut fiber at 50 cm distance, so that bamboo had not burned and chicken inside had not burnt. Every five minutes, bamboo had to turned so that all of chopped chicken ripe. This cuisine process took time about 4 hours, begun with condiment preparedness until cuisine ready for served.
Cooking in bamboo have several advantage, such as the taste more delicious, and the meat more tender.
Beside in its source area, you’ll find this exotic cuisine in Jakarta, in restaurants or food stall which served Manado/Minahasa cuisine.
Source : Kompas, written by Pingkan Elita Dundu & Frans Sartono, edited and translated by reog.