- Half a pre-cooked chicken (get this from the deli counter in your supermarket).
- 1 medium sized onion
- Cooking Oil
- Coconut. Get one of those packets of solidified “Creamed Coconut” from a supermarket.
- Salt
- Mild chilli powder.
- Fresh Basil leaves.
- Water.
De-skin the onion and chop it into small pieces.
Put about a tablespoon of the cooking oil into a medium sized saucepan. Put the pan on a medium heat and, when the oil is hot, add the bits of chopped onion.Turn down the heat and regularly stir the onion with a wooden spoon or something. After about 10 minutes, the onion bits will be fried and will have become quite soft. Do not let this stuff burn.
Meanwhile, put water in a kettle and set the kettle to boil. RTFM if you don’t know how your kettle works.
While the kettle is boiling, unwrap your half chicken and, using your clean hands, pull the skin off. Either chuck this unwanted skin away or give it to a cat. Next, still using your hands, pull all the chicken flesh off the chicken’s carcass and away from the bones. With your fingers, make sure that there are no chicken bones left hidden in the chicken flesh. When you’re done, get a knife and cut all the chicken flesh into bite-sized bits.
Now chuck the chicken flesh into the saucepan with the frying onion and stir it all together.
But hey ... we aren't Pacific-rimming, culinary purists, so who cares? No doubt, as soon as you start cooking this dish, your kitchen will soon attract an idiot who’ll shriek insults and offer unwanted advice. When this happens, just bite your lip, smile knowingly to yourself and appreciate the genius of the appellation “Angry Idiot's Thai Chicken”.
Because of the aggro that this recipe seems to provoke, we give two versions. Firstly a simple, idiot-proof version and secondly an augmented version for people who are more ambitious, or angrier.
Add the chilli powder to the saucepan and DO MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE USING MILD CHILLI POWDER. It’s hard to give an exact quantity, so add the chilli powder until the bits of white chicken in the pan are all lightly covered with the red chilli.
You’ll have to stir the chicken around while you do this. At this point, it might be a good idea to find out if the person who is going to share this dish with you actually likes chilli - but the chances are that that person is already standing next to you, screaming insults into your ear and telling you that you’re doing it all wrong. So ignore them.
Wash your hands after using chilli powder. Don’t rub your eyes or play with your goolies or the evening will be ruined.
On a very low heat, let the chilli-chickeny-oniony stuff fry in the bottom of the saucepan for about 5 minutes. Regularly stir is so that it doesn’t burn.
Now add some boiling water from the kettle. You need to add enough water so that the mixture is just covered. Turn up the heat so that the water starts to boil in the pan and then turn down the heat so that the water is just simmering. Add a pinch of salt and stir it all about from time to time. Simmer it for about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, using a cheese grater, grate about a quarter of the block of the creamed coconut and stir it into the saucepan. Keep the heat low and the coconut flakes will dissolve and thicken the sauce. If it’s all looking too thick, add a bit more of the boiling water. DON’T LET IT BURN. Use your common sense. If the person who is going to be eating this with you has stopped shrieking, get them to stir it and, if it burns, blame them.
Meanwhile, roughly chop the fresh basil leaves. Basil leaves normally come in smallish packets from supermarkets so chop the lot - stalks and all - and bung them in the saucepan. It’s unlikely that there’s going to be anything else that you can do with all those basil leaves so you might as well use them all up.
The basil loses its flavour if it is left to cook in the pan. Just give it a stir and then, a minute later, “Hoorah” ... your “Angry Idiots Chicken” is ready to serve.
Splodge the lumpy chicken and gooey sauce onto a bed of hot rice or noodles. If the person that you were going to eat it with has left the house and slammed the door, don’t worry coz it reheats beautifully!
And for any gastronomes out there ... here’s an appendix for ...
Naturally, you could and should add some chopped garlic with the onion.
Also, a half teaspoonful of fennel seed is good for flavour. Put it in right at the start so that it fries when the oil is heating up. It gives a good background taste.
For greater authenticity, leave out the salt and use Thai fish sauce (it’s always a gas having some of this stuff in your kitchen because it smells like a randy cat - but the stench soon goes when you add it to the cooking sauce). Add a good splosh.
Finally, you could use raw chicken instead of the ready cooked variety. Just extend the cooking time slightly. Personally, I find the ready-cooked variety more convenient and much easier to bone. It is often sold at about the same price as raw chicken, so why bother with the extra hassle?