For me, bakmi ayam is synonymous with university. My friends and I basically had bakmi ayam for every lunch we had during our university studies. Our campus was in Haymarket, right next to Sydney’s Chinatown, and there were a plethora of cheap and authentic Asian restaurants to go to. While we did occasionally go to other places, bakmi ayam was our staple. I remember sitting in my university lectures, looking at my watch and just waiting for lunch. It was always just assumed that we would have bakmi ayam for lunch. Looking back on it, it’s very surprising that I didn’t get sick of it. Some of my friends would occasionally put up a fight, but both the proximity of the Indonesian cafe (the Joy Cafe) and the tastiness of the dish were too easy to ignore. Bakmi ayam is an interesting dish.
At first glance, bakmi ayam doesn’t seem to be a complicated or exotic dish. It certainly doesn’t have the multi-layered textures of a lot of other Asian dishes or the exotic flavours of Thai or Malaysian food. However, there was something special about it that I could never put my finger on. The chicken had a unique flavour that I had no idea about, and the noodles were never too wet or dry – they seemed almost oily but without an abundance of oil. I always thought it was rather a mystical dish. It’s served with a nice, hot chicken broth, once again nothing extraordinary, but perfectly complimenting the chicken noodles. I always ate the dish without any accompaniments, whereas one of my friends always smothered it with sambal oelek (chilli sauce). I used to give my friend a lot of grief over his tendency to smother basically every dish that he ate with chilli – what was the point of ordering the dish if all you could taste was chilli? Ironically, probably because of my time living in Thailand, I now also love to use sambal oelek as an accompaniment to not just Indonesian dishes, but many other Asian dishes.
I was recently ruminating and reflecting on my university days, and I realised that, while I didn’t miss university at all, I really missed bakmi ayam. Then all of a sudden I realised something – why couldn’t I cook bakmi ayam myself? The thought of cooking such as dish during my university would never have occurred to me, as I wasn’t really into cooking back then. Given my fond memories of the dish, it’s not surprising that I cooked it the night after my epiphany. Making the chicken noodle element and the chicken broth are two distinct processes, and the latter is arguably more time-consuming and complicated than making the main dish. It was the first time that I made a broth using the carcass of a chicken – it was quite satisfying, as none of the chicken went to waste. The result was a genuine broth made from scratch, using no processed ingredients. As for the actual bakmi ayam, I started to figure out the puzzle that bakmi ayam had been for me in university. In particular, I realised that the primary flavours of the chicken came from kecap manis and oyster sauce. I knew that it would be very hard to recreate the same bakmi ayam that I had had 2-3 times weekly for five years, but I was very pleased with the outcome. The only part of the recipe I didn’t include was the bakso (meatballs), as they were never part of the broth at Joy Cafe. Bakmi ayam is a great recipe for people who want to cook authentic Indonesian food other than the better known nasi goreng and sate.
Recipe (serves 2-3):
300g boneless & skinless chicken, cut into 2cm x 3cm pieces
2 cloves garlic, crushed and finely diced
3cm ginger piece, crushed and finely diced
2 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs kecap manis
1 tbs oyster sauce
2 red shallots, finely sliced
400ml chicken stock
1 tbs tapioca starch, or 1 tsp cornflour
Fresh egg noodles, prepared as per instructions
Garlic-infused oil, or chicken oil
Bok choy or choy sum, blanched
Sambal bakso/oelek
Tongchai (Chinese preserved vegetable), to garnish
Spring onions, to garnish
Chicken broth
3L water
3cm ginger piece, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, finely diced
Bones and carcass of 1 chicken
4 red shallots, roughly sliced
10cm cane sugar stick, peeled and cut, or equivalent amount of white sugar
White pepper
Salt
2 spring onions, sliced diagonally
Bakso (meatballs)
To make the chicken broth, bring the water to the boil in a large pan. Add all the other broth ingredients except for the spring onions and bakso, and bring back to the boil. Reduce to a low heat and cook the broth for 30 mins. With 5 minutes left, add the bakso.
Meanwhile, combine a small amount of oil, half the soy sauce, the chicken and the ground white pepper in a wok or heavy-based frying pan. Add the tapioca starch and mix well. Remove from the wok.
In the same wok, stir-fry the garlic and ginger until fragrant, adding some more oil if required. Return the chicken to the wok and continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the chicken changes colour.
Add the shallots, oyster sauce, remaining soy sauce, kecap manis, stock, salt and ground white pepper, and cook until the seasoning is absorbed and the chicken is cooked.
In a bowl, combine 2½ tbs of garlic-infused, 2½ tbs of light soy sauce and a sprinkle of ground white pepper. Add 1 portion of the egg noodles, and mix well. Add the chicken and bok choy and garnish with tongchai and spring onions.
Pour some of the broth into a smaller bowl and add some bakso. Serve with sambal bakso/oelek.
Category: Indonesian
Rating: Four stars
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