• One chicken
  
  Ingredients to pound or blend:

• 2 X stalks Bunga Kantan (ginger flower; Torch Ginger; Red Ginger Lily; Torch Lily).

• 2 X stalks lemongrass.

• OPTIONAL: 2 X stalks tepus (Etlingera punicea (Roxb.) R.M. Smith) .
  (Wild Ginger - the same Zingiberaceae Family as the Common Root Ginger).
  Like batteries, these are cleverly sold in bunches of three when you only need one or two.
  Remove the fibrous sheath. Use only the whitish pith in the core.

• 1 inch ginger.

• 5 cloves garlic.

• 5 X red onions (bawang merah).

• OPTIONAL: Chillis to taste.
  
  The rest:
   

• Some daun bungkang (Syzygium polyanthum), or substitute with Bay leaves (3 - 4 pieces).

• Salt to taste.

• Chicken stock to taste.

• Water to just cover the chicken.

• 1 X bamboo log long enough to hold chicken with enough excess length
  for a leaves stopper, and boiling/bubbling of the cooking chicken.
  If you buy the log before it is used, you can prolong its freshness by putting some water inside the log. This will keep the bamboo moist.

• Tapioca leaves:
  Remove leaves from their stalks.
  OPTIONAL: Take a handful of leaves and wring with your hands to bruise the leaves, and then mix them with the chicken.
  Use another handful as a stopper for the bamboo log opening (or your could use banana leaves).
  REMEMBER! The tapioca plant contains cyanogenic glucosides (linamarin and lotaustralin). Upon hydrolysis, these compounds release hydrogen cyanide which is toxic. Therefore, tapioca parts which are eaten need to be sufficiently cooked to destroy the possible release of toxic compounds.

• OPTIONAL: Bamboo shoots thinly sliced (I added this as it seemed logical for a dish cooked in a bamboo log. However, I do not see this item in most traditional recipes). The shoots also serve to increase the veg component of this dish.

From top to bottom:
Torch ginger
Tepus core (pith)
Tepus intact (with fibrous, hard sheath)
Lemongrass (for scale)

Method

• Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces.

• Mix the blended ingredients with the chicken.

• Add the rest of the ingredients.

• Load chicken into the bamboo log.

• Add sufficient water to just cover the chicken.

• Stopper the opening of the bamboo log with tapioca or banana leaves.

• Place log over a mature, steady fire and leave for around 60 minutes (depends of fire and size of log/contents)
  or until sufficiently cooked.
  Cooking tip: The bamboo log heats up from the base (it is nearest to the fire) - when the highest part of the log with chicken inside is too hot to touch, the dish should be cooked and ready to dish out.

• Monitor the cooking regularly to ensure that the chicken does not run dry, the fire go out, or the bamboo log catch fire!

• If all the bamboo business proves too difficult, you can go modern:
  Wrap the chicken mix in aluminium foil, or place it in a covered ceramic bowl and bake in the oven for a sufficient time.

Here is the batch being cooked:

As served:



Observation and conclusion

It might be helpful to the cooking process if the chicken is not packed tightly into the bamboo. If there is some space between the chicken pieces, water as it boils, and steam, will be able to rise freely upwards from the base of the bamboo log where the heat is applied, to more quickly cook the chicken which is further away from the heat source.

This is by no means a spicy dish - it is a rather mild dish in comparison to say those in Malay cuisine. Appreciation of this dish lies in the multi-flavors imparted by the various herbaceous ingredients, each of which are complex in themselves.