Indonesian Chicken

I'm calling this "Indonesian Chicken," as it is based upon some recipes I've seen from that island nation. It is a good dish for a slow cooker. By the way, Indonesia is a group of islands; that is, it is an archipelago. It consists of more than 17,000 islands, although many of the islands are uninhabited. The best known islands are Sumatra, Java, Bali and New Guinea, although only Western New Guinea is actually part of Indonesia. Indonesia's capital city of Jakarta is located on Java, and that island's name was applied to coffee from there, and this was taken by American English to eventually become a slang term for coffee in general, as "Java coffee" arrived at West Coast American ports. Much of Indonesia was a Dutch colony (called the Dutch East Indies) until the area was overrun and occupied by the Japanese during World War Two, and the end of that war brought Indonesian independence. How many Indonesians died as a result of the Japanese occupation is unclear, but it certainly seems to have been in the hundreds of thousands, and perhaps even a couple of million. The long association between the Netherlands and Indonesia gave many influences to Dutch cuisine still in evidence to this day.

I highly recommend boneless chicken for this recipe, as when I first made this, I used whole chicken legs and it left small pieces of bone in the finished dish, and that's not fun.

Ingredients:

8 chicken thighs (preferably boneless) or whole chicken legs
1/2 cup ketjap manis (or substitute*)
1/4 cup water
1 heaping teaspoon sugar
4 garlic cloves, chopped
juice of 2 limes
6 green onions, chopped (with green)
1 tablespoon chopped ginger
1 chili pepper, finely chopped
2 tablespoons cornstarch mixed with 3 tablespoons water
1/4 chopped parsley

Add everything, except the cornstarch and water and parsley to a slow cooker. Put on "high" for one hour, then turn the setting to "low" and cook for about another 3 to 5 hours. Add the cornstarch/water mixture and stir it in, as best you can. The liquid should begin to thicken almost immediately, but let everything cook for a few minutes before checking to see if the sauce has thickened enough. Serve with rice and with the parsley sprinkled on top.

* "Ketjap Manis" is Indonesian soy sauce, which is syrupy and sweet. Some supermarkets or Asian markets will likely have "ketjap manis," but the keyword here is, "some." You can substitute regular soy sauce with some molasses, or even brown sugar, cooked together for just a few minutes.

I had the chicken with rice, raw carrot pieces, tomato slices and fresh basil leaves...

WORD HISTORY:
Parsley-This is a compound word, with the first part related to the name "Peter," and the second part related to "celery," a word borrowed by English from French, which borrowed it from Italian, which got it from Latin, which got it from Greek (whew!). "Parsley" goes back to transliterated Greek "petrosélinon," which meant "parsley" (literally, "rock/stone parsley," because it grew on rocky slopes). This came from Greek "pétros," which meant "rock, stone," but where Greek got the word is unknown. The second part came from Greek "sélinon," which meant "celery." "Sélinon" is also a word of unknown history. Latin borrowed the compound Greek word as "petroselinum," which then became "petrosilium." This was borrowed into English as "petersilie," meaning, "parsley." Meanwhile, the Latin form was passed to Latin-based French in the abbreviated form "peresil," which heavily influenced the English form (essentially merged with it) in the 1300s. The other Germanic languages all use forms from the Latin; and in fact, German uses the same form as English once had, "Petersilie."