Cucur Ayam

Cucur ayam is my most favourite home-cooked food...EVER. No one else in the house is as big a fan of it as I am, but everyone eats it without complaint :D To those of you unfamiliar with it, cucur ayam might sound a bit strange. I mean, cucur is usually of pisang (bananas), tebadak (jackfruit?) and various other tropical fruits. Cucur udang (prawns) is also quite common, but cucur ayam is almost never found.

The inspiration of cucur ayam comes from a dish KFC has a few years ago - the Crispy Strips. My siblings were a big fan of this, so ibu claimed that she could probably make a dish similar to that at home, at a cheaper price. She never was successful, cucur ayam taste nothing like Crispy Strips, but to me, they are a very good substitute.

Here's the 'recipe' for cucur ayam:
What you need:
Flour
Milk (can be substituted with water)
A little bit of oil
One egg (optional)
Season (to taste) with salt and pepper

Strips of boneless chicken, preferably breast (seasoned with salt and pepper)

What you do:
All you need to do is swirl it around to mix and combine all the ingredients to make the cucur batter. Then, dip the boneless chicken strips into flour, dip it into the batter and deepfry until golden brown.

All the ingredients for the batter blend together in perfect harmony to make a very delicious coating. XD Each ingerdient plays and essential part. For a better batter, you can use various types of flour to make the resulting batter have different qualities. For example, you can use cornflour to give it a crunchy texture, and selfraising flour to give a thicker coating of batter around the chicken. Although the egg is optional, I like having it in, as it gives a very nice...sort of "creamy" texture to the batter. Not everyone likes this though, as most people prefer it crunchy. Oh well, up to you.

The perfect cucur ayam should be golden brown, with the batter just slightly crunchy. In order to achieve this, you need to have all the ingredients in the correct proportions. I have yet to find the golden ratio, which is why I never cook this in UK, even though I like it soooooo much. As I mentioned before, we have a new maid now, and even she has yet to find the golden ratio. At the moment, her cucur ayam is a bit too crunchy and very oily (which is a no no). Tastewise, the batter has too little pepper, and the chicken is in too small strips, making it quite dry after being fried sometimes. The strips should be about as big as your little finger. But these problems are easily remedied, and I'm sure she will find the ratio after loads of practice ;) Its definitely easier if you are experienced at making cucur, which I am not....