Indonesian Chicken

It seems every place I have gone that had handy access to an ocean has included a steady diet of chicken. Yeah, chicken.

Fish, too, of course, but I expect fish. In Belize and Mexico the chicken surprised me. By the time I hit Indonesia, I half way expected it.

In the other places, I didn’t see very many chickens roaming around. In Indonesia they were everywhere. Well, everywhere except places like Komodo Island. I get the feeling they don’t live long there.

Although I spotted a few fenced in areas with chicken in them, and saw a number of woven baskets intended to hold fighting cocks, I didn’t see any coops. Even in the markets the chickens were more likely to roam free.

The exception would be the fighting cocks. Most of them were kept in the baskets or similar cages. They were considered too valuable to let wander.

You would think the meat would become too tough to eat. It was certainly not as weirdly plump as what I generally find at the grocery store. In once case it was crisped a bit like chicken jerky – but apparently that was a restaurant’s specialty.

Sometimes it would be mashed up and baked into a banana leaf the same way as the fish. Most of the time we got white meat with maybe a little breading or rolled under like a roast. However they did it, I enjoyed it all.