I was reading a couple of food review blogs from the Philippines and was amazed by the similarities between Malaysian and Filipinos cuisines, some of the name of dishes were similar if not exactly the same. I had a lot of fun peeking into the day to day lives of the people in my once neighboring country, was completely immersed in the wits and humors of those bloggers too!
Odd enough, after plenty of reading, it wasn't the typical Malaysian/South East Asian food that caught my attention. It was somewhere between Chicken Adobo (which I fully intended to try soon), Afritada, Crispy Pata, Lechon and Pancit that I started craving for this particular Chicken dish -- Chicken Chop ala Malaysian Style.
This is a "Western" food as far as Malaysian are concerned, it is sold in most restaurants, cafe or even hawker stalls in Malaysia. A steak house without Chicken Chop? Not a good steak house!
As I was standing in the kitchen chopping, seasoning, stirring and reflecting on my past life, I realized that I have never seen this Chicken Chop anywhere in the menu of restaurants here in the States let alone in Europe!
Then I started thinking of the reasons behind and slowly it started making sense! Malaysia is so diverse in culture that the Malay (Muslim) don't consume pork and many of the Indian and Chinese do not consume beef due to religion and believes. So it is only natural that the restaurants find the need to create a chicken dish that suits the majority!
So I think the Chicken chop was a derivation of pork chop, well I could be wrong though. This Chicken "western" dish was a marriage of the west and the east, a western dish with a local twist!
Today's recipe of my chicken chop was an impromptu and it turned out exactly the way I liked!
I made this for lunch and NS requested for it again for dinner, I doubled his portion in the evening with lots and lots of vegetables, he managed to cleaned his plate too!