Sarawakian Local Delights : Chicken and Pineapple Curry

• It is quite a normal practice for a longhouse family to slaughter a chicken from the backyard to welcome some friends or relatives.
• The chicken can be used in at least two dishes. One of the dishes would be chicken and pineapple curry, with more pineapple  than chicken. This curry is rather simple, often without coconut milk and the curry powder would be from a bottle or a tin, especially when the visitors are not expected.
• The aromatics would come red onions, some ginger and garlic. Lemon grass would help enhance the fragrance and taste of the chicken curry.

Curry is not an authentic ingredient of Sarawak cuisine as the spices are mainly from India or Indonesia. Sarawak is off the Spice Trade Route of the past.

This curry would be slightly sour, from the sour pineapples so some sugar might be added if desired.

the home grown free range chicken would also lend its sweetness and freshness to the dish.

It is an honour to be served home grown chicken dish in the longhouse because some of the best chickens are kept for cock fighting, or rituals and for breeding. Chickens when mature are often sold in the market for necessary cash for their children's education.

MANY of the longhouse women are very cash strapped especially when their husbands do not have steady jobs or fixed incomes. So they usually try to sell whatever they have from their farms in the once a week tamu near their longhouse.

May God bless them with financial stability.