Name: Soto ayam
Yield: Serves 6
Cuisine: Indonesian
Ingredients: bowlful glass noodles or vermicelli rice noodles, soaked in hot water until soft; crisp-fried shallots; 4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced; Sambal oelek or Fermented sambal; 4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped; 1 teaspoon coriander seeds; 2 cm (¾ inch) turmeric, peeled, or ¼ teaspoon ground turmeric; 4 small red Asian shallots, roughly chopped; 4 limes, quartered; bowlful good potato crisps; bowlful beansprouts; handful Chinese celery leaves; ½ Chinese napa cabbage, finely shredded; 1 teaspoon salt; 3 lime leaves; 2 lemongrass sticks, smashed and roughly chopped; 3 spring onions (scallions), chopped; 4 cm (1½ inches) ginger, skin scrubbed, thickly sliced and smashed; 2 tablespoons oil, for frying; 1 small chicken, trimmed of any extra fat in the cavity; 2 cm (¾ inch) ginger, peeled; 2 cm (¾ inch) galangal, skin scrubbed; 4 juicy tomatoes, sliced

Preparation info

Serves
6

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Fire Islands

By Eleanor Ford

Published 2019

About

Night falls quickly in the tropics. With little warning, soon after six, there is darkness. The evening insects begin their hum and geckos chirp in reply. To me, nowhere holds more magic at night than the land along a river gorge, deep in the heartland of Bali. It is here that our great family friend and ecological visionary Linda Garland created a paradise dotted with thatched huts, bamboo gazebos and covered bridges. She referred to it as an ‘edible landscape’ as all the vegetables, fruit